


The Sun Can't Stop Us Now

by JangJaeYul



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Ben POV, Breaking and Entering, Crossdressing, Diego Hargreeves has adhd, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Hand Jobs, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, References to Abusive Childhood, Religious References, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Stuttering Diego Hargreeves, academic negligence, desecration of the catholic church, diego's nip ring, gratuitous misfits references, i think i'm allowed to use that tag at this point, kind of, klaus is a truant is what i'm saying, references to canon-typical death, they smoke a lot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 21:33:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 52,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18764668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JangJaeYul/pseuds/JangJaeYul
Summary: Perhaps the kinds of boys who would sit on rooftops and smoke cigarettes weren’t the best type of friends to have. Then again, he’d tried making friends with most other kinds of boys, and they hadn’t liked him much. Maybe it was worth a shot.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> What if the Umbrella Academy was just a regular boarding school in 2019 and the even number squad were best buds who ended up all falling in love with each other?
> 
> I was gonna wait to post this until I'd finished writing the whole thing, but nat_cat and the discord crew convinced me to start uploading it now. I'll add more tags as I go (including a rating when I decide how rated it's gonna get).

By the time he reached the top step of the top flight of stairs, Ben thought he might need a lung transplant. There wasn’t a single elevator in the building, nor apparently a dumbwaiter that reached this high, and having just lugged his suitcase from the front door to the attic row he was beginning to regret packing so many books.

He made his way down the narrow hallway, counting the numbers - odds one side, evens the other - until he reached the end. He frowned, glanced down at the paper tag on the key in his hand, then up at the doors either side of him. 7 to the right, 8 to the left. He took a step back - 5 to the right, and a blank door to the left which, if he looked closely, had a patch of less-blemished wood at the top where a number 6 had presumably been affixed once upon a time. Ben sighed and wiggled the key into the lock.

The first thing that hit him was the cold; the room clearly hadn’t seen a heater in a long time, if ever. The second thing was the smell, the damp, musty odour of dark corners and unaired closets. That was quickly fixed, Ben thought, carefully closing the door behind him and letting his suitcase lean against the end of the wrought iron bed frame before crossing to the window and taking hold of the handle.

If he needed further confirmation that this room hadn’t been used for years, the grating squeal of the latch as he finally convinced it to turn would do it. He pushed the window open, letting in the evening air and a couple of moths that had been camped out on the edge of the ancient terracotta plant pots nestled in the corner of the window ledge against the ornate railing.

As he gazed out over the rooftops, taking deep breaths of fresh air and bracing himself to return to the stagnant room and begin unpacking his suitcase, a shingle slid past to his left and clattered down onto the lower roof. Ben blinked down at it, mildly disturbed to see the building literally falling apart in front of his eyes. If he hadn’t been standing very still, he might not have heard the muttered curse that followed.

Was there someone _on the roof?_

Ben took a moment to consider his options, then decided that if a person was about to fall through his ceiling then he should probably introduce himself first. Planting his feet on top of the disused radiator, he hoisted himself up onto the sill and leaned out the window.

Craning his neck, he looked up and saw not one someone but two. One was stocky and compact, dressed all in black and looking very sheepish with one hand behind his back; the other was skinny and lanky, stomach exposed under a tight t-shirt tie-dyed in psychedelic pink, mouth puffing out more smoke than the chimney he was leaning against.

It was this particular someone that looked down and caught Ben’s eye.

“Hello,” he said, as if his foot on the head of a stone lion-gargoyle hybrid were not the only thing keeping him from plummeting two storeys onto the roof of the dining hall.

Ben had so many questions. So many. Who were these two boys, what in God’s name were they doing on the roof, and _how_ did the pink one blow smoke rings like that?

Instead, when he opened his mouth, what came out was, “How did you get up there?”

“Diego is a man of many talents.”

The other one - Diego - rolled his eyes and removed his hand from behind his back to take a drag on his own cigarette. As he turned his head to look out over the city, Ben noticed the silver scar snaking through his close-cropped hair. It sent an uneasy shiver through Ben’s chest - what would scar a teenage boy like that?

“Care to join us?” the pink one asked.

The instinctive response was _no, hell no,_ and Ben’s mouth was halfway open to decline when some little part of his brain supplied his mother’s voice telling him to _make friends this time, Ben, please_. Perhaps the kinds of boys who would sit on rooftops and smoke cigarettes weren’t the best type of friends to have. Then again, he’d tried making friends with most other kinds of boys, and they hadn’t liked him much. Maybe it was worth a shot.

“How?”

The pink one turned to Diego and held out his cigarette. Diego, one hand occupied with his own cigarette and the other tucked under his thigh, opened his mouth. The pink one plonked his cigarette between Diego’s lips and turned back to Ben, gesturing for him to come out the window.

“That ledge will hold you,” he said, squatting down to straddle the liongoyle. “Give me your hand.”

Ben eyed the offered hand doubtfully. The window ledge he was reasonably confident would take his weight, at least for a moment. That skinny arm, less so.

“Come on, I won’t drop you.”

With a sigh, Ben shimmied his butt up onto the window ledge and leaned back until he felt the railing at his back, then pulled one foot up onto the windowsill and reached out for the pink one’s hand. His grip was surprisingly strong, and by the time Ben had his other foot out the window the pink one had already balanced him towards the roof so that he could step across to the base of the liongoyle.

“There you go,” the pink one said, taking his cigarette back from Diego’s lips without looking. “I’m Klaus.”

“I’m Ben.”

Diego gave him a nod of greeting. As Klaus leaned back against the roof, Ben noticed Diego’s other hand had come out from under his thigh, something small and silver twirling between his fingers. A fidget spinner?

No, he realised, as Diego stopped it and spun it in the other direction. A knife.

Maybe that was where the scar came from.

“So what brings you here?” Klaus asked.

“Uh.” Ben tried to figure out the scope of _here_. “My room is that one there-”

“I mean to the Academy,” Klaus amended. “What brings you under the Umbrella, so to speak.”

“Ohhh.” With any amount of cosmic mercy, the gathering darkness would hide the flush in his cheeks. “My parents travel a lot for work, so. Boarding school is easiest.”

Klaus made a knowing noise in his throat and tipped his head back to blow a lungful of smoke into the air. “It be like that sometimes.”

Diego snorted and shook his head. It occurred to Ben that he hadn’t actually heard Diego speak yet.

“Diego here is an orphan,” Klaus offered, as if translating. “From a young age, poor thing. School’s better than the orphanage, though, right?”

Diego conceded this with a nod and the twitch of a smile.

“What about you?” Ben asked Klaus.

“Ah.” Klaus paused to take a dramatic pull on the last of his cigarette, then stubbed it out on the liongoyle’s nose and flicked it off the side of the roof. “My mother didn’t want to deal with me.”

Diego gave Ben a look over Klaus’s head that just screamed, _I can’t imagine why._ Ben hid his grin in his wrist as Klaus straightened up and extracted a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his skin-tight jeans.

“Want one?” he asked, tilting the packet towards Ben.

“Oh, no thanks.” Ben waved him away. “I don’t smoke.”

“Good,” Klaus muttered, pulling a fresh cigarette from the pack and holding it between his lips while he fished a lighter from the other pocket. “I didn’t _really_ want to share.”

“We should go inside,” Diego said suddenly. “If Dr. Pogo catches us out here we’re d- d- in trouble.”

Klaus gave a sigh that seemed almost too aggravated for the situation. “You’re right. Dammit.” He looked regretfully at the unlit cigarette, then slid it into the pack and crammed the whole thing back into his pocket. “Come on, let’s go.”

Diego turned and shimmied down the side of the chimney out of sight. Klaus nodded after him, indicating for Ben to follow. “Just watch out for the brown brick, it’ll break if you put too much weight on it.”

Ben’s heart gave a scared little squeeze, but he slid between Klaus and the liongoyle until he could reach out and touch the chimney. When he peered over the edge of the roof, Diego was leaning out the window of the bedroom next to Ben’s.

“Just swing your legs in,” he instructed. “Faster you do it the easier it is.”

Ben swallowed hard and wrapped his arms around the chimney.

“Brown brick,” Klaus reminded him from his perch atop the liongoyle. Ben adjusted his grip and began to slowly climb down the chimney.

“Now kick your legs in,” Diego said. “I’ll catch you.”

Trying his hardest to ignore the two-storey drop below him, Ben took one leg away from the chimney and reached it towards the window. He could presumably step to the window ledge, but with the eave jutting out like that there wouldn’t be room for his body and he’d overbalance.

“The other one too,” Diego said. “Straight through the window.”

“Oh hell,” Ben whispered. How would the school explain this kind of death to his mother?

“Come on,” Klaus said from above him, “if I have to sit up here another minute I’m gonna start smoking something very different, and then we’ll really be in trouble.”

“Quickly!” Diego hissed.

Two seconds later Ben was on the floor of the bedroom, his head spinning and Diego’s hand sandwiched under his hip. With a clatter of iron railings Klaus slid in through the window, landing gracefully on his feet and considering them with a smile.

“Excellent jump. I’d give you a two for that landing, though.”

“Sorry,” Ben groaned to Diego, wriggling off his hand and sitting up. Diego waved his concern away and flexed his wrist, then picked up his abandoned knife from the floor and resumed spinning it.

“So this is my room,” Klaus said, flopping down on the bed and spreading his arms wide. “Isn’t it nice?”

Ben looked around. The room was identical to his, except it was warmer, drier, and better decorated. Klaus had taped posters and drawings to every inch of wall, and there was a fucking _bead curtain_ hung between the bed and closet.

“Diego’s through that wall,” Klaus said, flinging his legs up over his head so that he was almost bent in half, toes resting against a sketch of what, if Ben looked closely, seemed to be a human ouija board. “And if my spatial reasoning isn’t entirely fucked, you’re through that other wall. We’re all in a row! Yay!”

“We both have to share a wall with Klaus,” Diego muttered, “solidarity.”

“Ex _cuse me_ ,” Klaus sniffed, “I am a delight to share a wall with. Would you rather be next to the gorilla man opposite you?”

“Gorilla man?” Ben wondered.

Diego sneered. “Pretty sure that guy lives on protein shakes.”

“Either that,” Klaus added, “or he’s two fat twelve-year-olds on top of each other in a trench coat.”

“Also plausible,” Diego said, with an emphatic gesture of his knife towards Klaus.

He then rolled over onto his stomach and began picking at the clawed foot of the wardrobe with the tip of his blade. Ben leaned to the side to watch as the varnish scraped away to reveal a lighter shade of wood beneath, the chip of it slowly beginning to take shape into an ornate letter K. When he looked back over his shoulder at Klaus, he found him still upside-down on the bed, pencil in hand, adding some small detail to his ouija-man - though how he had any sense of perspective from that angle was beyond Ben.

What a pair, Ben thought. So creative, yet so destructive.

“Well, uh.” He climbed to his feet, careful not to jostle Diego with that knife so close to his nose. “I’m gonna go unpack my stuff before dinner.”

“Better hurry,” Klaus said, without looking away from his drawing. “The chimney was hot, which means Grace is already cooking.”

Diego gave him a little waggle of his fingers in lieu of any proper goodbye, and Ben tried his best not to trip over his own feet on his way out the door.

_Well,_ he thought, once the door of his own bedroom was safely shut behind him, _that didn’t go too badly._ Had he just successfully made not one but _two_ friends, and on his first day too?

He dropped to his knees and unlocked his suitcase. He really had brought too many books, he sighed, taking them out one by one and stacking them next to the bed. There was no bookshelf in the room, but he could probably stand them up along the back of the desk.

The last book - _The Ersatz Elevator_ \- revealed Octi, her face squished between the toes of Ben’s good shoes. He pulled her out with a whispered apology and brushed the plush of her face into order, setting her on the bare mattress and arranging her tentacles neatly so she sat upright. She stared at him fondly as he arranged his shoes and slippers at the end of the bed and began to sort through the clothes. On second thought, he should probably take the opportunity to make the bed now, just in case he didn’t have time after dinner. The clothes could wait to go into the closet.

It was while he was struggling with the fitted sheet that the door squeaked open. Ben looked around, sprawled over the mattress with the unwilling sheet bunched in his fists, and saw Klaus leaning in the doorway. His smirk wasn’t unkind, exactly, but it was embarrassingly wide.

“Need a hand there?”

Ben glared at the sheet and sighed. “Yes please.”

“Very nice of them to give us linens,” Klaus commented, taking the sheet from Ben and flapping it out on top of the mattress. “It would be nicer if they gave us ones that fit.”

Ben laughed. “Okay, it’s not just me!”

“Nope. We’ve all been there.” He nodded Ben towards the opposite corner, and together they wrestled the sheet onto the mattress. “Just FYI, the pillows are lumpy as shit. If you need a new one, let me know and I’ll hook you up. I’ve got a dealer.”

“A pillow dealer?” Ben raised an eyebrow.

“Well.” Klaus’s grin had the decency to look a little abashed. “Not primarily. But he has many connections.”

They finished making the bed, and Ben turned without thinking to set Octi on the pillow. The little chuckle behind him brought him back to his senses quick sharp.

“Who’s this?”

_Oh, hell._

“Um.” Ben kept his back turned so Klaus couldn’t see his cheeks burn. “Her name’s… Octi?”

“Octi, oh my god, that’s _precious_.” The tone was almost mocking, but Klaus’s hand was soft as he reached past Ben to pick up Octi and bring her fuzzy little beak up level with his own nose. “She’s _cute_.”

Ben wasn’t quite sure if Klaus was making fun of him, so he kept his mouth shut as he took Octi back and hugged her to his chest. Her face squishing into his breastbone was calming, her tentacles sprawling out over his stomach like a protective skirt.

“Is it like hugging four people at once?” Klaus said. “Eight arms around you at night. Post-orgy, but without the snoring.”

Ben felt the flush right up to the tips of his ears. “I wouldn’t know,” he mumbled.

“I would,” Klaus grinned, wicked and devious but all trace of mockery gone. He stood up and arched backwards to pop his spine, then jerked his head towards the door. “Come on, I just heard the dinner bell.”

“Did you?” Ben strained his ears as if he could still catch an echo of it. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“Yeah, it only rings on the first two floors. You gotta be paying attention or you miss out on the soup.”

Ben scrambled to his feet and followed Klaus out onto the landing, pausing to lock his door before scurrying to catch up with him on the stairs. “How long have you been at the Academy?”

“About two weeks?”

“Two _weeks?_ ”

“Yeah, my mom couldn’t stomach having me at home for a whole summer so she packed me off early.”

“I thought you’d been here years.”

Klaus laughed. “Nope. I never stay at any school more than a year. Two, tops.”

“What about Diego?”

“Dunno. You’d have to ask him. Longer than me, for sure.”

They reached the landing, and the conversation lapsed as Ben trotted along trying to keep up with Klaus’s long strides. He’d had Klaus and Diego pegged as long-time friends - there seemed to be a rapport between them that Ben would have expected to take years to forge. But instead - perhaps their friendship was still in its infancy. Perhaps there was room for him in there.

Scuttling into the dining hall on Klaus’s heels, Ben spotted Diego sitting on the far side of the room. He tugged at Klaus’s sleeve and pointed across at him.

“He’s saving us seats,” Klaus said. “Let’s get food.”

At the serving table Ben found hot food, fresh bread, and a renewed will to live in Grace, the housekeeper and apparent nanny to all the boarders.

“Holy moly,” he whispered into Klaus’s shoulder, which was as close to his ear as he could reach. “She’s beautiful.”

“She’s an angel,” Klaus corrected him with a stern finger. “Watch how you speak of our blessed mother, God has ears everywhere.”

Ben blinked, slightly cowed by the fervour in Klaus’s voice.

“Are you religious?” he blurted out, and then instantly wished he could un-ask the question.

But Klaus just grinned at him, a bite of dinner roll between his teeth as he picked up his own plate in one hand and Diego’s in the other. “No,” he said, “but you should have seen your face.”

-

They traipsed back up to the attic row after dinner. Diego sloped off to his room with a muttered intent of getting a head start on the math textbook, but Klaus followed Ben into cold, musty bedroom 6 and perched on the desk chair, chattering aimlessly while Ben refolded and tucked his clothes away into the wardrobe.

“I almost made it a whole summer this time,” he said, as if expecting Ben to have previous summers to compare this to. “Thought I was going to last all the way to the end, but then Ma caught me with an ounce up my shirt and that was it. _Raus, raus,_ out of my house.”

“An ounce of what?”

“Weed, Ben,” Klaus said, leaning sideways into Ben’s field of vision to give him an incredulous look. “Marijuana. The devil’s lettuce.”

“Oh.” Ben buried his head in the closet to hide his blush in a stack of crisp new shirts. Klaus, mercifully, didn’t follow that line of naivety, opting instead to turn so he was straddling the back of the chair and could lean his chin on the wood to watch Ben fold his underwear.

“What about you?” he asked. “Did you spend the summer with your parents?”

Ben nodded. “They were actually both there at the same time for a whole week at one point. We got to spend an entire day together, between the jetlag and the packing.”

“Accent,” Klaus said, apropos of nothing.

It wasn’t a question, but Ben answered it anyway with a renewed twitch of self-consciousness. Those traitorous short vowels. “Korea.”

“Oh.” Klaus leaned back against the desk and his psychedelic shirt hitched up high enough that Ben got a whole eyeful of pointy hipbone. “I was gonna guess SoCal or something.”

“ _Oh!_ ” The instinct to smack his head against the solid mahogany wardrobe was almost irresistible. “No, I grew up in San Francisco actually.”

“Cool, cool.” Klaus picked up a pencil from the desk, a remnant from the previous resident, and began twirling it around his fingers. “So where are your folks at?”

“Right now?” Ben considered for a moment. “Singapore. By the end of the fall they’ll be in Boston, then Mom’s in New York, then Jakarta for a bit, then… I lose track.”

Klaus whistled. “Fancy. Business people? Explains why they got the money to send you here.”

Ben made a noise between his teeth that he hoped Klaus took as agreement. Slotting the last of his socks into the top drawer of the wardrobe, he picked up his suitcase and tipped out the last of its contents onto the pillow so he could close it up and store it under the bed. It was mostly trinkets and electronics left - the stress ball went on the bedside table, pencil case on the desk, phone in his hand.

“Is there WiFi?” he wondered, flicking it off flight mode for the first time since he’d touched down this morning.

Klaus snorted. “They can’t even give us lampshades for the ceiling lights, do you think they give us WiFi?”

Ben conceded this with a nod, then a frown as he waited for his data to connect. This was definitely his American SIM. “I’m not getting a signal.”

“Oh yeah, the whole building’s a dead spot,” Klaus said. “Probably all the lead paint. You can totally get service on the roof, though! Maybe if you lean out the window far enough you can send a text.”

Rolling his eyes, Ben crouched down to plug in his charger next to the bed. At the very least, the phone was an alarm clock. He found only one socket, however, which was occupied with the bedside lamp.

“Tough choices to be made around here,” Klaus said. “Light, or technology?” He stood from the desk chair and arched his back. “What would the caveman who designed this building do?”

Ben dropped the charger on the floor with a sigh and turned to sit on the bed.

“Interesting choice,” Klaus said. “I’d have plugged in the phone and set something on fire for light. And warmth, Christ on a cracker, this room is freezing.”

“Yeah, how is your room so warm? Do you have a heater or something?”

Klaus shook his head. “Diego and I have the chimney running up past us. Truly unbearable in the middle of the day when the sun’s out and Grace is making scones. I’m gonna cook alive come spring - if I’m still here, that is.”

Ben shot him a look that was equal parts concerned and curious, but Klaus seemed not to notice. Rocking on the balls of his feet, he looked around at Ben’s mostly assembled room and spread his hands to encompass all the drab, minimalist order.

“Well,” he said, “it looks like you’re all set. And we’ve still got an hour before Dr. Pogo comes to kick us into bed. Let’s go find Diego.”

“Find him?” Ben followed Klaus out onto the landing. “Wasn’t he just gonna be in his room studying?”

“There is absolutely no guarantee that he hasn’t climbed out the window to go be Batman under cover of darkness,” Klaus said. Ben was starting to realise he should give up on trying to work out when Klaus was joking.

Klaus tapped his knuckles against Diego’s door the same way an evil villain might drum their fingers on a table. “Yoohoo, Diego darling! Would you like to come play? We’re so lonely without you.”

For a moment there was silence from inside, lasting just long enough that Ben was beginning to think Diego seriously might have climbed down the side of the building to go be a vigilante in the night. Then the door flew open, and Diego’s knife embedded itself in the doorframe between Klaus’s index finger and thumb.

“ _Jesus!_ ” Klaus leapt back from the door and cradled his hand against his chest. “That’s my joint-rolling hand, are you _trying_ to kill me?”

“You know you can just knock like a normal human, right,” Diego snarled, yanking the knife out of the wood and tucking it back under his belt. “You don’t have to pound my door down when I’m _this close_ to understanding functions and limits.”

“You know full well I have no limits,” Klaus retorted. “Is it fun time now? You know I waste away without constant stimulation.”

Diego pressed his lips together into a frustrated little line, but ultimately sighed and stepped back to let the two of them in. Ben stuck close to Klaus’s heels, keeping an eye on that knife at Diego’s belt.

“You do realise, don’t you,” Klaus said, “that classes haven’t actually _started yet_. There’s no reason to eat the textbook this far in advance, it will still be just as mouldy-fresh on the first day of term.”

“I want to get a head start,” Diego muttered, snapping the door shut behind them and crossing to the desk to mark his page and flip the textbook closed. “I actually care about my grades, you see.”

“I can’t imagine why.” Klaus dropped onto the bed in a graceful sprawl, feet propped up on the wrought iron baseboard and arms behind his head. “Come sit, Benny. It’s a party at _Casa Diego_.”

Ben carefully perched on the edge of the bed. He so wished he could push past the awkward feeling of invading someone else’s private space, but he didn’t have that thing that Klaus had that allowed him to walk into any room and take immediate ownership of it with absolute comfort.

“What have you got?” Klaus asked.

Diego dropped to his knees in front of Ben, who almost jumped up in surprise, but instead of pushing him aside Diego just reached past his feet to rummage around under the bed and come up with a half-empty square bottle.

“Rest of the Jack,” he said, passing the bottle to Klaus and going back for another look. “Or beer. It’s been sitting against the chimney wall, though, so it’s warm.”

Klaus wrinkled his nose. “Jack it is. We should keep the beer in Ben’s room, it would stay nice and frosty in there.”

“Not a bad idea,” Diego said, sitting up and taking the bottle back from Klaus to open, then offering it to Ben. “Here.”

Ben blinked at the bottle for a moment. _Oh- whiskey_. “No thanks,” he said, “I don’t-”

“Okay, no worries.” Without another word, Diego brought the bottle to his lips and took a sip. Klaus, however, was not so casual.

“Ben,” he said, taking the bottle from Diego and swirling it around for a moment before swigging a mouthful down. “Benny, my boy. I’m starting to think you might be a little bit straight-laced. You don’t drink, don’t smoke. What _do_ you do?”

“I-” the flush went straight to his eyeballs this time. _Busted._ It had been a nice five hours, but Ben had never been much of an actor and there was only so long one could hide that kind of bone-deep innocence. So much for an attempt at having cool friends. Well, he might as well kill it dead right now rather than letting it drag out much longer. “I… read?”

Klaus snorted. “Reading is not a social activity. I mean what do you do that is both fun and involves other people. Do you play card games? Are you a D&D kind of man? Do you tap dance or something?”

“No, I-” Ben grimaced. “I really just read, that’s all-”

“Or do you ballroom dance!” Klaus jumped up from the bed and tugged Ben to his feet, bringing him into some clumsy rendition of a waltz hold. “Are you a competitive foxtrotter? Swing dance? Or are you into the _other_ kind of swinging?” He began to drag Ben around the room, shuffling and hopping and treading on toes. “I always wanted to be in _Dirty Dancing_ when I was a kid.”

“Yeah, but not for the dancing,” Diego muttered from his perch on the windowsill.

“Shut up, you.” Klaus pointed a finger at Diego over Ben’s head as he spun him awkwardly under one arm. “I would make an _excellent_ Johnny Castle.”

“Cause you like deflowering seventeen-year-olds?”

“Well there’s really nothing wrong with that, is there, seeing as how _I am also seventeen_.”

He flung Ben out into a spin and yanked him back, then tried to dip him. Ben, unfortunately, was not expecting to be dipped, and rather than trusting Klaus’s hand at his back to catch him he windmilled his arms so hard he smacked Klaus in the face and fell on his ass.

Klaus clutched his nose with a squeal of pain. Diego snorted a laugh and slapped Klaus’s shoulder hard enough to elicit another squeak, while Ben apologised profusely from the floor.

They were abruptly interrupted by a thumping at the door.

“Probably Pogo here to takesy-backsy your enrollment, Klaus,” Diego said, shoving him out of the way to get to the door.

“Before term even starts? That’s a new record!” Klaus flopped back onto the bed with one celebratory fist in the air, the other still poking at the bridge of his nose to make sure it really was still in place.

When Diego opened the door, though, it was not the diminutive Dr. Pogo on the other side but a girl - tall and slim with dark skin and light hair, her halo of curls tousled around her face by the rake of many frustrated fingers.

“Hey there,” Diego said. “What can I d-”

“Would it hurt you to be quiet?” she interrupted him. “I’m trying to study and all I can hear is you thumping around.”

Even the back of Diego’s head looked confused.

“You can hear us from the library?”

She narrowed her eyes at him like she couldn’t quite believe a person could exist without a functional brain. “No. I can hear you from my room.” She pointed a finger diagonally behind her at the door opposite Klaus’s room.

“I didn’t know this was a co-ed floor,” Diego said.

Klaus sat up on the bed and raised a hand. “Does this mean I have to be fully clothed any time I leave my room? Cause I don’t know if I can promise that.”

She gave him a withering look and turned back to Diego, completely ignoring Ben still sitting on the floor. “Can you tone it down just a little bit? I really need to study.”

“Yeah,” Diego said. “Yeah, me too, I was trying to do my m- math-”

Her bedroom door snapped closed before he could finish the sentence.

“Aw, bad luck,” Klaus said as Diego sighed and pushed the door shut. “I think she really liked you, though!”

“There are girls on this floor?” Ben said, rolling to his knees and leaning against the bed next to Klaus’s sprawling legs. The thought of it made him feel self-conscious.

“I hope she’s not too scarred by living opposite me,” Klaus said, “cause these walls are thin and she will _definitely_ hear me masturbating.”

On second thought, what was self-consciousness next to pure, unadulterated mortification? Ben made a mental note to save all his jerking off for the shower and do it _very, very quietly_.

“Is that what you’ve been doing?” Diego asked, flicking the knife out of his belt and twirling it between his fingers. “I thought you were slaughtering a chicken.”

“Nope, just gently choking it.” When Ben looked up at Klaus his grin was so wide that Ben could see the inside of his cheeks. Diego mimed throwing the knife at him and Klaus gave a squeak of fright, throwing his hands up to shield his face.

“You stress me out,” Diego grumbled. “I need a smoke, you wanna come on the roof?”

Klaus stretched back against the wall and sighed, long and loud. “No,” he decided. “I can’t be fucked climbing the chimney. You go without me.”

“Suit yourself.” Diego tucked the knife back into his belt and pushed the window sash up. “Coming, Ben?”

Without giving Ben a chance to respond, he shimmied out the window and disappeared upwards. A moment later his hand appeared at the top of the glass and gave a little wave.

“I’ll pull you up,” he said, when Ben stuck his head out the window to look up at him. “Give me your hand.”

Ben looked back at Klaus, who was still lying on the bed staring at the ceiling.

“Go ahead,” Klaus said. “I’ll keep an ear out for Pogo.”

So Ben climbed out the window and let Diego hoist him up onto the roof. It was easier than he’d expected - Diego was stronger than Klaus, and his grip was firm enough to hold Ben as he scrambled up over the eave.

“Lean against the chimney if you’re worried about falling,” Diego said. “Or sit on one of those things.”

“The liongoyles?” Ben eyed the ugly stone face of the nearest one on the other side of the chimney, between Klaus’s room and Ben’s.

“Liongoyle?” Diego chuckled. “I like that.” He flipped open his cigarette packet and pulled one out, then leaned into the shelter of the chimney to light it. Watching the first puff of smoke drift away into the night, he jerked his head to the right. “You’ll wanna be on that side.”

“Hm?”

“Swap.”

So saying, he nudged Ben away from the chimney towards the liongoyle. As Ben settled himself behind its haunches, he realised Diego had placed him upwind; for all that he’d asked Ben to accompany him while he smoked, he was doing his level best not to blow it into his face.

It was nice, sitting on the roof with his legs astride the ugliest creature he’d ever seen in stone, watching the city move through night as Diego quietly smoked beside him. Ben wrapped his arms around the liongoyle’s lumpy shoulders and let his mind drift over the day. And what a day it had been. At eight o’clock this morning he’d been boarding a flight in San Francisco, and now he was two friends richer and four storeys up with his chin resting on a two-hundred-year-old lion monstrosity.

“So,” Diego said, breaking the silence. “Is this good or bad for you?”

“Huh?” Ben tore his eyes away from the stray dogs snuffling through the tipped-over bins in the alleyway opposite. “Is what good or bad?”

“Boarding school,” Diego said. “Are you happy to be here, or would you rather be anywhere else? I know Klaus hates it - but then Klaus hates organisation in all its forms.”

Ben contemplated this for a moment, running his fingers over the divots in the liongoyle’s side. “Neutral,” he decided. “I would definitely like to be able to see my parents, but then it’s not like they’d be there if I were at home anyway.”

“Mm, yeah.” Diego seemed to require no explanation of that, just took a sympathetic drag on his cigarette.

“What about you?”

“Hm.” Diego paused for the length of another puff. “Klaus told you I don’t have any parents, right?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s so trusting,” Diego muttered. “I don’t think it even occurred to him that orphanages don’t tend to pay fuckloads of m- money to send their kids off to expensive boarding schools.”

Ben watched his face, not sure what significance to pick out of that.

“I’m here on scholarship,” Diego said finally. “I knew if I stayed there I was gonna end up like every other kid who gets orphaned this side of the border. So I worked m- my ass off, and I got a scholarship to come here.” He paused again, sucked in so long a mouthful of smoke that Ben wondered how there was any room left in his lungs for oxygen. “So yeah,” he continued. “Yeah, this is p- pretty good.”

As the smoke wisped up out of his mouth into the night air, Ben let his eyes trace over the cuts and scars on Diego’s skin. From the long, silver trail through his hair to the knuckles scraped permanently pink, there was a lifetime of fight etched into Diego’s body. Ben wondered how he felt, hearing Klaus speak so casually about getting kicked out of school after school.

Speaking of-

“Hey, guys?” Klaus’s head appeared at the window beneath Ben’s left foot. “Dr. Pogo just called lights out.”

Diego sighed and stubbed his cigarette out on the chimney. “Need a hand getting down?”

“Yeah.” Ben climbed off the liongoyle and shuffled towards the chimney.

“Don’t worry,” Klaus said, “if you fall there’s a fire escape on the next floor to catch you.”

“Because that wouldn’t break your neck at all,” Diego muttered. He reached out his hand to Ben and held him steady while he lowered himself down off the roof and swung his legs through the window.

“See you in the morning, Dee,” Klaus chirped once they were inside, ruffling Diego’s hair and dodging the swipe of his knife. “I’m trusting you to wake me up in time for breakfast.”

“Set your own fucking alarm for once,” Diego muttered. “Goodnight, Ben.”

“Goodnight.” Ben followed Klaus down the hall, and they paused outside his door. “So, uh. What time is breakfast?”

“Seven,” Klaus said. “Don’t worry, Diego will wake us up.” He stretched his arms over his head and his t-shirt hitched up to reveal his whole stomach, wispy little treasure trail and all. “I’m gonna die come Monday. I don’t want to go to classes after breakfast, I want to go straight back to bed and sleep until lunch.”

Ben gave him a sympathetic hum and a little wave of farewell as Klaus’s stretch turned to a yawn, then tiptoed down the hall to his own room and closed the door behind him as quietly as he could manage. He wondered if there was anything he could do to stop that hinge squeaking.

The cotton sheet and thin wool blanket did very little to keep off the chill of the room, and Ben snuggled Octi into his chest as tightly as he could, searching for any shred of warmth in her plush tentacles. His toes were freezing. This room really was an icebox.

_Post-orgy, but without the snoring._

Ben wrapped one tentacle around his neck like a hug, grinning into Octi’s beak in spite of the cold.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a content warning for blood/injury.

By the end of the weekend, Ben had identified fairly near every other occupant of the attic row. The protein shake gorilla man opposite Diego was Luther, who shared a wall with curly-haired Allison. Down the other end of the hall was a quiet, dark-haired girl who seldom appeared outside of her room and seemed to spend most of her time practising the violin.

“What I don’t understand,” Klaus sighed, “is how Allison can stand five hours of non-stop Stravinsky but not _my_ melodic voice. I don’t see her banging down Vanya’s door every five minutes.”

“That’s because Vanya actually adds to the ambiance of the floor,” Diego muttered.

In the room opposite Ben was a tiny boy with a serious face who looked closer to thirteen than seventeen but carried himself with the air of a middle-aged professor. Ben had greeted him a couple of times when they’d passed each other on the stairs but the boy hadn’t given him so much as a smile, just a perfunctory nod as he swept past.

Room 8, through the wall from Ben, was a mystery.

“Maybe I should just go back to bed,” Klaus mumbled into his coffee. “Can you tell Pogo I’m sick, Benny? I think I have a fever, I really shouldn’t be hurting myself with math-”

He squeaked a protest as Diego grabbed him by the back of the neck and pressed his hand to Klaus’s forehead.

“You’re fine,” Diego said. “You’re _not_ skipping the first day of classes.”

“But it’s just gonna be a review, they won’t actually teach us anything new.”

“Uh huh, and how much attention did you pay last year?”

“I paid plenty of attention!” Klaus insisted through a mouthful of banana and waffle, syrup dripping down his chin. “I know all about. Uh. Fractions.”

Diego snorted, while Ben passed Klaus a napkin to catch that syrup before it could hit his clean white shirt.

“Come keep me company,” Ben said with a gentle tug to Klaus’s sleeve. “I’ll help you take notes.”

Klaus sighed, loud and long-suffering. “Fine,” he conceded. “I’d better not leave you alone with Diego anyway, you might get stabbed.”

“My knives are reserved for you,” Diego drawled. He flashed a hint of silver at Klaus from under the table, where he was carving away at the leg without looking, and the grin that split across Klaus’s face seemed unwilling but entirely irrepressible.

Dr. Pogo may have been a gentle housemaster, but as a math teacher he was captivating. At four foot nine he stood significantly shorter than the comfortable writing height of the blackboard, so rather than teaching from behind the desk he roamed the classroom, lecturing in a slow, methodical way and returning to the front of the room only when he needed to climb his stepladder to illustrate something on the board. Pogo commanded the attention of the room with little effort; even Klaus couldn’t help but sit up straight.

Posture didn’t necessarily equate to comprehension, though.

“Do you understand any of this shit?” Klaus muttered out the side of his mouth.

Ben hunched a shoulder and twirled his pen between his fingers. In truth he understood the lesson completely, but he sensed that Klaus was struggling and it seemed a bit insensitive to rub it in.

“It’s perfectly simple,” the kid in front of them said, twisting around in his seat to glare at Klaus. “What do you not get?”

Klaus dropped his pencil on the desk and leaned back in his seat to flap a dismissive hand at the page. “Any of it. All of it. None of this makes sense.”

“It would if you had a brain.”

Ben felt his own jaw drop, and next to him Diego’s arm tensed in a way that told Ben he was itching to grab his knife. Klaus, however, seemed unfazed.

“Hey, you’re that guy from our floor, right? Room number five, or whatever, I mean _clearly_ you’re a _genius_ if this is so easy for you. What’s your name?”

“I _am_ a genius,” the kid insisted, “but even if I weren’t this would still be the easiest calculus problem ever. Maybe you’ve just fried your brain with the drugs you keep under your mattress.”

Ben’s eyes darted to Klaus, trying to gauge the level of horror on his face to see whether that was an accurate shot or just a wild accusation. Diego was already halfway out of his seat, a growl in his throat; Ben made a wild grab for his wrist to try and keep him back.

“Boys!”

The bark of Dr. Pogo’s voice drowned Ben’s gasp as pain lanced hot through his hand. He flinched back into his seat, and as the initial flash of it subsided he thought maybe he’d been imagining things. Then his whole hand gave a great, sickening throb, and Ben looked down to see the prickle of blood welling up in a deep line along his palm.

“Nice try,” Klaus was saying, just loud enough for the other kid to hear as Dr. Pogo wove his way between the desks towards them. “I keep my weed up Mother Mary’s ass.”

Ben was still staring dumbly at his own hand, clutching his wrist as if that would make the gash stop smarting. _Gosh, what a lot of blood,_ he thought dimly. It was beginning to trickle down over the heel of his palm, warm and sickly crimson; if he didn’t stop it quickly it was going to drip down and stain his pants.

Looking up, he found Diego staring at him, eyes wide and mouth open. His hand was still at his side, and when Ben followed it down he saw the glint of a blade at the cuff of Diego’s sleeve. _Ah. Of course._ Silly Ben; he should know by now that Diego’s hands were typically too occupied with knives to be grabbed at short notice.

“Oops,” Ben whispered.

As Dr. Pogo reached their desks and began attempting to defuse the verbal sparring between Klaus and the kid from room five, Diego took hold of Ben’s wrist and yanked him out of his seat. Dr. Pogo was too occupied directing Five’s attention back to his own paper to notice them duck out of the classroom, and Diego dragged Ben around the corner to the tiny bathroom tucked into an alcove under the overhang of the stairs.

“I’m so s- sorry,” he gasped, yanking paper towels and pressing them to Ben’s palm. “Are you okay? I didn’t m- m- m-”

“I’m fine,” Ben said, even as his hand stung sharply enough to bring tears pricking to the corners of his eyes. “It was my fault, I shouldn’t have-”

“No, no, you were f- fine, I sh- shouldn’t have had the d- d- stupid thing in m- my hand.”

“I thought you were going to hit him.”

“I was,” Diego admitted. “Or stab him or something- no, not stab him, just throw my kn- knife at his hand, scare him a bit.”

“And get kicked out of school?” Ben bit back a hiss of pain as Diego took away the blood-soaked paper towels and pressed a fresh one to the wound. “You were about to throw away your scholarship over-”

“Don’t,” Diego interrupted him. “Don’t b- bring up my sc- scholarship, I- I’m-” he gave a grunt of frustration and tugged another paper towel from the dispenser, then turned to soak it under the tap. He didn’t speak again until he had it pressed to Ben’s palm, the freezing water taking a soothing edge off the pain. “He was so smug, and he was going after _Klaus_ \- God knows Klaus already thinks he’s an idiot, he doesn’t need that asshole drilling it into him. God, fuck, this isn’t gonna stop bleeding.”

The paper towel was already bright red when Diego peeled it away to look at the cut; the sight of it made Ben feel sick.

“I’m a bit dizzy,” he admitted. “That’s- is that a lot of blood, or does it just look worse than it is?”

“No, that’s a lot of blood.” Diego swore under his breath and shoved all the paper towels down into the trash, then pulled another handful and gave them to Ben. “Press on it, hard. We’re going to find Grace.”

Ben nodded and followed Diego out of the bathroom. “Where is she?”

“Probably down in the kitchen,” Diego said. “Please don’t p- pass out on the way there.”

“I’m not gonna pass out,” Ben assured him, but as his hand throbbed sickeningly through his stomach he thought perhaps he shouldn’t be making any promises.

By the time they located Grace in the laundry room next to the kitchen, Ben was feeling decidedly light-headed.

“Hello, boys,” she beamed, turning away from the washing machine with her hands on her hips. “What are you doing down here? Shouldn’t you be in class?”

“We need your help,” Diego blurted. “Ben’s hand-”

Grace looked down at the bright red wad of paper towels clutched in Ben’s grip, and her smile flickered into concern.

“Oh, dear. What have you done, sweetie?”

“I-” Ben carefully pulled the paper towels away from the wound. “I cut myself on… a letter opener.”

It was a terrible lie, but Grace didn’t even blink.

“Well don’t you worry, we’ll have you patched up in no time. That looks like it hurts, you poor thing.”

She sat Ben down at the table and fetched a first aid kit from the kitchen. As she pulled out a bottle of disinfectant and a needle, Ben felt the blood drain out of his own face.

“What’s that for?”

“I’m just going to give you some quick stitches,” Grace said. “Then we’ll have you all bandaged up and you’ll feel better soon.”

Behind him, Diego made a little whimpering noise. Ben reached back with his uninjured hand and touched Diego’s wrist, squeezing his eyes shut and gritting his teeth as Grace threaded up her needle. He felt the press of Diego’s forehead against his shoulder, and then his hand was in Ben’s, both of them gripping tight and hiding their eyes as Grace carefully stitched Ben’s palm together.

“There we go.” Grace patted Ben’s knee and began to clear her kit away. “Now, you just rest for the day. I don’t want to see you in classes, you go have a nice nap and rest that hand. You’ll look after him, won’t you Diego dear?”

Diego nodded. “At lunch- can you tell K- Klaus-”

“I’ll tell him you’re up in your room,” Grace said. “Don’t worry, dear, I’ll take care of it. You two go lie down.”

She gave Ben a hug, and _oh, gosh,_ that was a painful sob of his heart. 

“Thanks, Mom,” he murmured.

Diego’s surprised little laugh reconnected Ben’s brain, and he felt the full-face flush with a renewed spin of nausea.

“I mean- Grace.”

“Oh, don’t worry, dear,” she said. “All the kids call me Mom who don’t have one at home.”

He did have a mom at home, Ben wanted to say - except she _wasn’t_ at home, she never had been much, and of all the nannies that had ever stood in her place not one of them had ever hugged him so softly or called him _dear_ or patched up his cuts and scrapes with such love. It felt like a betrayal, to think of Grace as a mom when his own mother was so warm and caring; it wasn’t her fault she was never there to care in person. And yet Ben couldn’t help the glow in his cheeks as Grace ruffled his hair and combed the stray fluff of it back behind his ears with soft fingers.

“Thanks, Mom,” he repeated, and pushed Diego out of the laundry ahead of him before his face could burn any hotter.

Halfway up the stairs to the second floor, he had to stop. His head was spinning, and his hand felt like it was determined to expel all the blood in his body with each pulsing throb. He tugged on Diego’s sleeve to get his attention and slumped down onto the stairs, trying to keep at least moderately upright.

“Are you okay?”

Ben shrugged and waggled his good hand. “I’ve been better.”

Diego let him sit and breathe for a minute, then tapped a hand under his elbow. “C’mon.”

He helped Ben to his feet and tugged both hands over his shoulders to drag Ben onto his back, securing Ben’s arms around his neck and his legs around his waist. He offered no explanation and Ben didn’t ask for one, just held tight and let Diego slowly, carefully piggyback him up the stairs to the attic row.

When they came to a stop at the top of the last flight of stairs, Ben slid down to the floor. It took him a moment to regain his balance, and he decided it was time for that nap. Sleep seemed like a great idea right now. He hadn’t taken more than two steps down the hall towards his room when Diego’s hand was on his shoulder.

“Your room’s freezing,” Diego said.

Ben blinked at him. “Yeah?”

Diego pushed open his own bedroom door and nodded towards it. When Ben, still dizzy and confused, continued to stare at him, Diego reached out and pulled him inside.

And that was how Ben ended up spending the morning on Diego’s bed, curled into a ball around his aching hand and watching the birds fly across the window while Diego carved details into the drawing mannequin on his desk. Every time Ben glanced over the little thing would have another feature, a nose or an eye or the shallow curve of an abdominal muscle. Diego was laser-focused, his nose so close to the doll that it seemed to Ben he could see the details already there beneath the surface and was just uncovering them rather than creating them from his imagination.

“You’re really good at that,” Ben observed, as Diego blew away the wood dust to reveal a carefully defined pectoral.

Diego grunted, and for a moment Ben thought that was all the response he had to give. Then he thumbed over the mannequin’s new face and sat back with a nod, setting it down on the desk.

“It’s just something to do with my hands,” he said. “Keeps me busy, you know?”

That was too light an answer, Ben thought. This was not a _keeping busy_ kind of activity. It wasn’t mindless or mechanical, not something he could do with his attention elsewhere, like knitting. The way Diego spun his knife like a fidget spinner, _that_ was mindless. This was more.

“What kinds of things do you make?” he asked, rather than pointing this out.

Diego shrugged. “I don’t actually _make_ anything. I modify. Deface, really.”

Ben tried hard not to snort, he really did.

“What?” It was striking, the way Diego’s brows flattened into a hard line when he narrowed his eyes.

Ben gave him a tiny, placating flap of his hand, as much as he could without letting go of the injured one. “Do you mean you just spent an hour _defacing_ that mannequin? Is that how you think of it?”

Diego twisted to look over his shoulder at the mannequin on the desk. The thing had _fingers_ now, for God’s sake. “I mean. It’s not like being carved up by some Mexican kid with a knife fetish was its intended purpose.”

“Yeah, but-” Ben closed his eyes to keep himself from rolling them. “You made it _better_. I don’t think defacing things is supposed to improve them. When you deface something you’re harming it.”

There was a second of silence, in which Diego’s eyes flicked to the hand cradled against Ben’s chest and Ben realised what meaning Diego had injected between his words.

_Oh, hell._ Ben would have hit himself if he’d had a free hand. _Open mouth, change feet._

Something thumped against the door. It wasn’t so defined as a knock; more like someone throwing their entire body weight against the ancient wood. Diego got up and went to go investigate.

“Well, hello!” Before the door was even fully open Klaus had tumbled through, his book bag dangling from the crook of one elbow and both hands occupied with full plates of food. These made their way to the desk, and Klaus turned with hands on his hips. “Grace tasked me with bringing you some lunch. Where did you go? You dipped out of math and left me with that mouthy little brat from room five!”

“I c- c-”

“We had an accident in math,” Ben interrupted, twisting his wrist around so Klaus could see the bandage across his hand. Even that tiny movement hurt, and he couldn’t help a wince.

The slap of Klaus’s palms against his own cheeks was loud, the melodramatic horror on his face almost a welcome break from Diego’s quiet guilt.

“ _What?_ What happened?”

“I grabbed Diego by the blade.”

Klaus turned his whole body to face Diego, hands still pressed to his cheeks and mouth open in a parody of shock. Ben resisted the urge to follow his gaze, but out the corner of his eye he could see the way Diego squared up for battle.

“Well,” Klaus said, before Diego could speak. “It was bound to happen eventually. I’ve already cut myself on his knives by accident at least twice.”

“That’s because you were trying to juggle them,” Diego pointed out, but the defenses seemed to have lowered. He crossed the narrow room to plop himself down on the bed and pull Ben’s head into his lap, leaning back against the wall and kicking off his shoes.

“We’re not here to apportion blame.”

Ben grinned and tucked his knees up towards his elbows as Klaus grabbed the plates from the desk and shuffled onto the bed beside him. They just fit, the three of them in a row, Klaus and Diego at either end and Ben lying between them with his head on Diego’s thigh.

“So how bad is it?” Klaus asked.

Ben considered the bandage, which spanned the full width of his palm and curled around the sides. It was longer than the wound itself, but not by much. He told Klaus as much. “Grace had to stitch it up for me.”

“Mmmwe’re not talking about stitches right now,” Diego protested. “Food please, Klaus.”

Klaus handed him one of the plates. “I can’t believe you spend your whole life with a knife in your hand and you’re scared of _needles_. They’re just tiny knives!”

“They’re _not!_ ”

“Wimp,” Klaus insisted. “Benny, do you need help eating?”

Ben shook his head and shuffled up onto one elbow so that Klaus could help him sit up. “I’ll just use my left hand.”

“If you’re sure,” Klaus said, setting the other plate down in Ben’s lap. “I am happy to feed you like a baby bird.”

Diego made a disgusted noise through a mouthful of lettuce. “You mean puke into his mouth?”

“Diego!” If Ben hadn’t spent the last three days listening to a never-ending stream of Klaus’s verbal fuckery, he almost wouldn’t have caught the faux-scandalised tone.

Diego, on the other hand, was two weeks deeper into Klaus’s life and somehow still fell for it. “You were the one who brought it up!”

“I am _horrified_. Disgusted. Perturbed. Give me that.” He reached over and took the bread roll off Diego’s plate, ignoring his squawk of protest and taking a big bite before dropping it back onto the plate. 

-

While Ben quickly learned to eat, brush his teeth, and even do up the buttons of his school shirt with his left hand, there was one thing he definitely couldn’t do.

“Crap,” he muttered, staring down at his blank notebook with a sinking stomach.

The paper was willing. The pencil was willing. His traitorous hand, swollen under its bandages, was very much not.

“What?” Klaus muttered back, one eye on the joint he was rolling under the desk and the other on Hargreeves’s back.

“Writing,” Ben hissed. “How am I gonna take notes?”

Klaus looked between Ben’s blank page and his injured hand. “Copy Diego’s?”

Diego gave a dismissive little grunt, and Ben didn’t have to look at him to know he was shaking his head. That was an absolute non-starter: Diego’s notes were a mix of terrible handwriting and tangential side notes in Spanish, and while they made perfect sense to Diego, Ben doubted he would be able to decode them with a gun to his head.

“Can you take notes for me?” he whispered.

Klaus’s eyes bugged out of his head. “Me? Take _notes?_ ”

“Quiet!” Hargreeves barked.

Ben ducked down over his desk, pretending to copy down the information on the blackboard in case Hargreeves decided to turn away from it to glare them into silence. He was almost more terrifying as a history teacher than as a headmaster; Ben was glad running the school took enough of his time to keep him from teaching more than one subject.

“Please, Klaus,” Ben begged. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

“With the good grades he’ll be getting from actually paying attention,” Diego muttered.

Klaus gave Diego a dirty look, but seemed to sense that firing back would surely draw Hargreeves’s ire. Instead of pushing his luck, he pulled Ben’s notebook towards him and picked up his own pen.

“What if I don’t actually _understand_ what he’s saying?” he whispered.

“Just copy it down anyway,” Ben said. “We’ll figure it out later. Thank you, Klaus, I owe you big time.”

“Yeah you do.”

What followed was surreal: fifty whole minutes of Klaus, silent, taking notes and _actually paying attention_. Ben had known him for less than a week, and already he knew how hilariously improbable that was.

Even more improbable was how Ben ended up sitting there twiddling his thumbs the whole lesson without picking up his pencil once.

“Thank you,” he said as they headed to the dining hall. “I really appreciate it, you have no idea.”

“I want some of your dessert,” Klaus said, which Ben took to mean _you’re welcome_. “Wait. Wait. Am I going to have to do this for you _every class?_ ”

“Um.” Ben gave him a sheepish grimace. “Yes please?”

Klaus groaned and let his head fall forward into Diego’s shoulder. “ _Nooo._ Okay, then I want half your dessert for a week.”

“I can’t believe it, Klaus,” Diego said, reaching back to pat his head before shrugging him off. “You’re extorting an injured man.”

“I think we’ve already established there’s not much lower I can sink.”

“And yet you’re still trying.”

The wave of Klaus’s hand was as dismissive as it was camp. “Eh. My mother always told me I was destined to be gutter trash.”

He sashayed away towards the serving table, leaving Ben and Diego standing by the door.

“He makes the weirdest jokes,” Ben murmured, frowning after Klaus’s swaying hips.

Diego sighed and adjusted his armful of textbooks. “Yeah, that one wasn’t a joke.” He nodded towards the table at the far side of the room, by the huge windows looking out over the courtyard. “You wanna save us seats while I get you some food?”


	3. Chapter 3

_God,_ this room was cold. Ben cuddled Octi in against his chest, trying to draw back some of the body heat she’d sapped from him. It was a long game - come morning she’d feel nice and warm against the predawn chill, but right now she was a veritable leech. Her tentacles did provide a moderate amount of insulation, but he could still feel the goosebumps on his arms scraping against the grain of her plush body every time he shifted under the covers.

Being so cold made it difficult to get a good night’s sleep, and it was starting to affect his studies. More than once he had found himself falling asleep in class, or else zoning out with his eyes glazed over in the vague direction of the board. If he hadn’t had Klaus to take notes for him, his grades definitely would have started slipping by now.

At the point that he pressed his toes against the sole of the other foot to warm them up and realised that he couldn’t actually feel anything below mid-arch, Ben decided this was ridiculous.

Slipping out of bed with Octi still pressed to his chest, he tiptoed out the door and down the hall, moving slowly so as not to trip over his numb toes. He paused between doors 2 and 4, hesitating. Waking Diego in the middle of the night when he wasn’t expecting it was likely to get him impaled. With that in mind, Ben tapped on door number 4.

There was no answer, but Ben wasn’t really expecting one. Knocking loud enough to wake Klaus was likely to also wake the rest of the floor, and Ben wasn’t entirely convinced that Five wouldn’t tell on him to Dr. Pogo. Instead, he pushed the door open as quietly as he could.

“Klaus,” he whispered.

Silence.

“ _Klaus._ ”

Klaus snuffled awake, and Ben saw the shadow of his head lift off the pillow. “Mm?”

“It’s me.”

There was a fumble of covers, and then the bedside lamp clicked on. Klaus blinked at him, all beadhead and drool, taking in the sight of Ben standing there shivering in his flannel Academy pyjamas.

“Ben,” he mumbled, squinting at Octi, whose face was very much squished into Ben’s breastbone. “Tentacles.” Whatever he said next got somewhat lost in a yawn, but he seemed to have amused himself, because the yawn resolved into a sleepy grin. “What’s up?”

Ben stepped one foot on top of the other, trying to press some warmth into his toes. “Do you have a spare blanket or anything?”

“A- a blanket?”

“My room is freezing,” Ben said. “Any chance your pillow dealer hooked you up with a quilt or something at any point?”

“Oh.” Klaus yawned again and shook his head. “No, dude, sorry. It’s really cold in there, huh?”

“I can’t feel my feet,” Ben admitted.

Klaus snorted and pulled back the blankets. Ben waited for him to get up, but after a moment Klaus was still staring at him.

“C’mon,” Klaus said, “you’re letting all the warm air out.”

“Oh- oh!” Ben took a hesitant step towards the bed. “Me, in-”

“Yeah, hurry up and get in here.”

Ben climbed in under the covers next to Klaus, who promptly wrapped him up in his spidery arms and pulled him back against his chest. “Jesus Christ, Bentacles, you really _are_ cold. Turn the light off, will you?”

Extracting one arm, Ben reached out and clicked off the lamp. The room fell into darkness, and Ben was suddenly very aware of his entire body, the line of his back pressed against Klaus’s stomach, the unknown width of air between their legs. He didn’t want to move in case he kicked Klaus, or worse, nudged gently against him.

This crisis seemed to be entirely one-sided: Klaus hooked one leg over Ben’s knees and pulled him in until he could rub both of his feet against both of Ben’s, heedless of the squeak of surprise Ben tried to muffle in Octi’s head.

“You’re gonna get hypothermia in that room,” Klaus said, more breath than voice into Ben’s ear. “I know Grace is good at first aid, but I don’t think she knows how to amputate toes. How’s your hand?”

“Fine.” Ben considered his palm. “Still hurts, but I’m getting better at not bending it by mistake.” Learning to weave a fork between his fingers rather than holding it between thumb and forefinger had been quite an exercise.

Klaus hummed his sympathy into the back of Ben’s neck, and with a wriggle of covers his hand slid over Ben’s where it rested on Octi’s fuzzy face. His fingers stroked across Ben’s wrist, almost like a massage if you took all the strength out of it. “Diego feels really bad about that, you know.”

“I know.” Ben sighed and closed his eyes. “I told him not to. It was my fault.”

“I mean. He was the one casually wielding a knife in the middle of math class.”

“Yeah, but-” Ben yawned and rolled his shoulders back, trying to get comfy without falling off the edge of the bed, “but that’s just Diego, he always has knives.”

“Yeah,” Klaus huffed, a noise that might have been amusement or frustration. “It’s kinda hot.”

That had Ben’s eyes open, frowning across the room at the shadow of the dresser. What an odd comment to make about a friend.

Klaus misread his silence.

“C’mon, Benny, admit it. Diego’s knife thing is kinda sexy.”

“I mean-”

“Exactly.” Klaus didn’t seem to care what Ben actually thought about Diego’s knives. Perhaps he was already falling asleep again, Ben thought, as Klaus yawned into his shoulder and left his face buried there.

By the time Ben had stopped shivering enough to sleep, Klaus was breathing little snores into the collar of his pyjamas, his fingers twitching against Ben’s hand. 

He didn’t exactly hate it.

-

“Well, th- this is new.”

Ben cracked an eye open and squinted up at the bright light filtering in through the window. Dawn, not sun. He wasn’t quite late for breakfast yet.

Diego was looking down at him, one eyebrow raised. Ben smiled, reflexively - Diego’s morning wake-up calls had quickly become a comfortable part of his routine, and much harder to resist than an alarm clock. It was only when the arm against his waist twitched that he realised it wasn’t his own, and in the same moment figured out why Diego was looking at him like that.

“ _F’v m’r m’n’ts,_ ” Klaus muttered into Ben’s shoulder.

“Five more minutes,” Ben translated.

Diego’s other eyebrow shot up to join the first. “Yeah, I got that. You two good there?”

“Yeah.” Ben paused to yawn and stretch his legs out under the blanket. “I was cold. So. ’M sleeping here.”

“Ah.” Diego sat down on the edge of the bed, patting the blanket first to make sure he wasn’t about to squash Ben’s foot, and flicked the knife out of his belt to begin spinning it between his fingers. “Is this a permanent development?”

Ben shrugged. “Probably not.”

“Yep, it is,” Klaus mumbled. “Bentacles is cuddly. You should try it, Dee.”

If Diego’s eyebrows went any higher they were liable to disappear into his hair. “ _Bentacles?_ ”

In answer, Klaus fished one of Octi’s tentacles out from under the covers and waggled it at Diego. He still hadn’t removed his face from Ben’s shoulder. “On the list of ways to get woken up at one in the morning, the sudden appearance of a small Californian tentacle monster is pretty high up there.”

Diego rolled his eyes and stood up. “Breakfast is in ten minutes. You wanna get up?”

“Yeah.” Ben pulled the covers back and tried to swing his legs out so he could stand up. “Klaus, let me go.”

“What if we just…” the expansive yawn that pressed itself into his spine was warm enough to make him shiver all over, “just stayed in bed all day.”

“Klaus, that’s possibly the gayest thing you’ve ever said in your life,” Diego sighed. “Get up, you’re making Ben uncomfortable.”

Klaus’s arms released immediately, as if Ben’s skin had burnt him. “Breakfast,” he announced. “What do you think Grace has made, Dee? I’m hoping for waffles.”

“You’re always hoping for waffles,” Diego said, reaching out a hand to help Ben sit up so he wouldn’t have to brace his bad hand against the bed.

“That’s because waffles are Jesus’ favourite breakfast food.” Klaus rolled over onto his back and starfished out until his feet poked out beneath the edge of the blanket.

“You know,” Diego said, “for an atheist you sure do like your Catholic references.”

“Hey.” Klaus pointed a long, bony finger directly between Diego’s eyebrows. “I am firmly agnostic.” He blew a kiss to the small ceramic statue of the Virgin Mary on his corner table, which Ben knew was primarily there as a receptacle for illicit substances. “Love you, Mommy.”

Diego rolled his eyes and turned towards the door. “One day Pogo’s gonna pick that thing up and then you’ll _really_ be fucked.”

“He wouldn’t dare disturb the Blessed Virgin.”

“He would if he thought he might find your entire stash in the base.” Diego jerked his head towards the door and Ben followed him out onto the landing so Klaus could get dressed.

“It’s his greatest _fuck you_ to his mom,” Diego explained once the door was shut behind them, as Ben gathered Octi’s tentacles up into his arms so they wouldn’t trail along the ground. “She’s spent seventeen years forcing the church at him, and now he’s made it his life’s m- mission to desecrate every inch of it.”

Ben eyed him silently, sensing there was more to be added. After a moment, though, Diego just shrugged.

“I guess that’s what happens when you spend your kid’s entire childhood telling him he’s going to hell for everything that makes him happy.”

With that Diego slouched off towards the stairs, and Ben scuttled into his room to get dressed before Klaus could beat him down to the dining hall.

-

“Does it make you uncomfortable?”

Ben looked up from his notebook. It was starting to fill up with Klaus’s handwriting, which was just as spidery as the rest of him and which Ben now found comfortably familiar after two weeks spent poring over it in the library every evening. “Does what make me uncomfortable?”

“Sleeping with Klaus. I mean-” Diego’s ears pinkened, “not _sleeping_ with him, I mean, you know. Sharing a b- bed.”

Ben tilted his head to the side. “No, not really. Why?”

Diego hunched his shoulder to scratch against his ear. “He’s very… handsy.”

“Oh. Yeah, I suppose.” Klaus was a rather _active_ cuddler, and a couple of times over the past week Ben had woken up with his face tangled up in Klaus’s armpit, breathing in the lingering fumes of his deodorant. “It’s still better than sleeping in my room. If it’s this cold now, what’s it gonna be like come winter?”

Diego pulled a face. “You might actually freeze to death.”

They broke off and returned to their respective studying as the librarian walked past. Ben carefully turned the page of his notebook with his index and middle fingers; he still couldn’t quite manage to pinch anything against his thumb, but as the skin began to knit together between the stitches he was getting some of the use of his fingers back. It was only in recovery that he was realising how bad the original injury had been. No wonder Diego felt guilty.

“You know,” Diego said under his breath as the librarian wandered away, “you can always share m- my room too, if you want.”

Ben looked up from his notes, but Diego’s eyes were still on his textbook.

“Thanks,” he murmured.

“I’m not as violent as Klaus, in my sleep,” Diego added.

“I think you’re violent enough when you’re awake.”

That made Diego giggle, an odd sound from him and one that he quickly stifled into his hand. Ben couldn’t help but smile, unexpectedly tickled by the blush rising through Diego’s cheeks.

“He twitches,” he found himself volunteering. “When he’s falling asleep. Like a cat dreaming about catching mice.”

“Does he really?” Diego’s grin was sharper than his knives. “I’m not surprised. He’s always j- jumpy.”

“He’s spring-loaded.”

Diego pressed both hands over his mouth as his shoulders shook with silent laughter. “Come on,” he whispered when he’d regained control of his voice. “I’m not getting any more studying done tonight, let’s go find him.”

The attic row was quiet when they reached it, save for the soft pluck of Vanya tuning her violin and the murmur of Allison’s voice from Luther’s room. The light was on in room 4, but the door was locked and Klaus didn’t answer their knocking.

“He’s not in my room,” Diego said. “Is he in yours?”

Ben felt he scarcely needed to check, but he pushed open the door anyway. “Nope.” That mildewy smell of stale shadows was beginning to grow again, and Ben pushed the window up with a squeak of rust. “Where else would he be? Cause he’s definitely not hanging out with Five.”

“That’d be a cold day in hell. Colder than your room, even.”

Ben jumped and banged his head against the window latch. Leaning out the window, he looked up to see Klaus straddling the liongoyle, a plume of smoke escaping his lips into the twilight air.

“ _Guten tag,_ ” Klaus said. “Have you been looking for me?”

“Yeah.”

Klaus paused to suck in another lungful and let it go. “How was your study session with Mr. Stabby?”

“Fine.” Ben jerked his head back over his shoulder towards Diego in the doorway. “He’s right here, if you wanna hang out.”

“Oh, absolutely. C’mon up.”

“Uh.” Ben looked down at the railing of the window ledge, then up at the rough edge of the eave. “I don’t think I can climb up there at the moment. I’d need both hands.”

Klaus pulled a face. “Oh yeah.”

“What if we helped you up?” Diego suggested from behind him, leaning over Ben’s shoulder to try and see Klaus.

Ben pursed his lips and shook his head. “I’d still need to use this hand.”

Diego hummed next to Ben’s ear. “Is there another way up?”

Planting a foot on the broken radiator and bracing his wrist against Diego’s shoulder, Ben hoisted himself up enough to put his stomach on the windowsill. The ornate stonework on the side of the building made it difficult to see anything to the right of his room, but if he leaned out just far enough-

“There’s a fire escape by the next room,” he said. “I could probably climb up from that.”

“Let’s do that, then.” Klaus reached forward to stub out his cigarette on the liongoyle’s nose and flicked it down onto the roof of the dining hall. “Mind out.”

Ben stepped back to let Klaus clatter through the window into his room. For a person so angular and bony, he sure was aerodynamic as he landed neatly on his feet and shoved the window sash down behind him.

“Alright,” he said, brushing the liongoyle dust off his butt. “Lead on.”

“Okay, but-” Ben hurried after Klaus and Diego as they strode out into the hallway, “but the fire escape is through room 8-”

“Which is locked,” Diego confirmed, testing the handle.

“That seems like a safety hazard for the entire floor,” Klaus said. “Do these people not give a damn about the wellbeing of the vulnerable children in their care?”

“On a scale from _maybe_ to _definitely not_ , I’m g- gonna go with _fuck no_.”

“Well,” Ben sighed, “it was a nice idea, but-”

“Don’t give up so easily, Bentacles,” Klaus said, bending down to squint at the door handle. “We’re still getting in.”

“How?”

Klaus’s smirk was wicked and self-indulgent. “How do you think I got kicked out of my last school?”

He slid a bobby pin from the strap of his tank top and bent it between his teeth, then squatted down and stuck it into the lock.

“Do you just casually have one of those on you in case you need to b- break in somewhere?” Diego asked, eyeing Klaus’s short hair.

“Hey, always be prepared,” Klaus said, “I was a boy scout.” As if sensing the incredulous looks Diego and Ben were giving the back of his head, he added, “for two weeks.”

Ben watched, fascinated, as Klaus felt around inside the lock with the pin. Finally he twisted it to the side and nodded to the handle. “Try it now.”

Diego turned the handle, and the door clicked open.

“Aw yeah.” Klaus clambered to his feet and tucked the bobby pin into the pocket of his skinny jeans. “The day I can no longer pick one of these babies, you’ll know it’s time to pack me off to the old folks’ home.”

Ben pushed gently against the creaky wood. It occurred to him, a bit belatedly, that it was entirely possible someone lived in the room. He hadn’t heard anyone coming or going, though, and by this point in the term he would have expected to have at least caught a glimpse of any occupant. Sure enough, when the door swung open the room was empty. Not just empty of human occupancy - empty. Not a single piece of furniture nor decoration broke the clean line from door to window; there wasn’t even a bulb in the light fitting hanging from the ceiling.

Klaus blew out a lazy raspberry between his lips. “Well, that was anticlimactic.”

“Shh.” Diego pushed past him to hold the door open, then closed it behind them once they were all inside. “See if you can get the window open.”

Ben wiggled the latch, but it didn’t budge; the window appeared to be painted shut.

“Okay, this is _seriously_ negligent,” Klaus said. “What are we supposed to do if there’s a fire and we need to get out?”

“There’s another fire exit through Luther’s room,” Diego muttered.

“What if the fire is _in Luther’s room?_ ”

Ben pressed his good fingers over Klaus’s mouth to shut him up. “It’s more likely to be in yours, you delinquent.”

Klaus smacked a hand to his chest as if wounded, but he didn’t argue, just stepped aside so Diego could flick his knife out and begin chiselling away at the paint around the seam of the window. It took him a few minutes, but eventually the wood began to move in its frame and Diego was able to jiggle it up until the gap was wide enough for them to climb through.

“This is nice,” Klaus said, as he leaned against the railing and peered over the side. “Like the roof, but less chance of falling.”

“Yeah, but more chance of getting caught,” Diego muttered, poking Klaus in the small of the back. “Go on, get up there.”

“What do you think, Benny boy?” Klaus asked, once he had his feet secure on the shingles. “Can you climb that if I give you a hand?”

“Here,” Diego said. He patted the railing and held out his hands. “Put your foot there. I’ll give you a boost. Klaus, grab the _wrist,_ not the hand.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Klaus rolled his eyes and made a show of carefully avoiding Ben’s injured palm. Together they hoisted Ben up onto the roof, Diego scrambling up after him and taking a seat on the shingles next to Klaus.

“This is nice,” Ben said, turning to look out over the courtyard at the end of the building. “We’ve got more of a view from here.”

Klaus nodded, a fresh cigarette already between his lips. “Yeah, and if we fall we’ve got the fire escape right there to catch us.”

“I’d still rather go with _not falling_ ,” Diego muttered, digging his own packet of cigarettes out of his pocket.

Klaus laughed, the sound muffled between closed lips as he lit his cigarette and handed the lighter to Diego. “Fuck,” he breathed, the word bathed in smoke. “This school is gonna drive me fuckin’ cuckoo bananas.”

“Because you’re not allowed to skip class and spend all day sleeping?” Ben guessed.

“No, because we’re not allowed to _leave_.” Klaus gestured at the street beyond the school gates. “We’re barely allowed out in the courtyard unless it’s for P.E., and we’re only allowed to leave the grounds for like, a fucking half hour on Saturday afternoons or whatever.”

It took a moment for that to register, and Ben turned to frown at Klaus. “Wait. What? Klaus-”

“Klaus,” said Diego. “Are you serious?”

“What?” Klaus held up his hands as if to fend them off. “Those are the rules!”

“Yeah.” Diego seemed to be fighting between amusement and exasperation. “Yeah, they are. _For the middle schoolers._ ”

Klaus’s face fell faster than a sack of bricks. “What.”

“Klaus, we’re seniors. We’re allowed to leave the grounds. Are you serious? This whole time you’ve thought you couldn’t leave?”

“I-” Klaus looked like he had been thrust into the middle of an existential crisis. “Are you for real? Wait, then- but you guys haven’t been out either!”

Ben shrugged. “I go study in the courtyard sometimes.”

“I’ve been out to scope out the neighbourhood a couple times.” Amusement seemed to be winning on Diego’s face; even in the gathering dusk Ben could see the twinkle of hilarity in his eye as he observed Klaus’s horror. “You really thought you weren’t allowed to leave. You absolute bird brain. It’s not like you’re in detention.”

“And besides,” Ben added. “When have rules ever stopped you doing something?”

He broke off, grinning, as Diego burst into a fit of giggles and Klaus turned red in the darkness, muttering something about _trying to toe the line for once_.

“You’re a delight, Klaus,” Diego chuckled, breathless with laughter. “I swear to God.”

“I’m glad you’re getting some amusement out of this,” Klaus grumbled.

“Oh, I am. I really, really am.”


	4. Chapter 4

Room 8 soon turned into a favourite place for Ben, Diego and Klaus. Having realised there was an empty room at the end of their hall that every other person in the building apparently thought was sealed off and totally disused, they quickly made it not only their go-to roof access route but also their secret hiding spot for the moments when they just wanted to disappear from the Academy.

Having just finished bashing his head against the dusty library shelves for three hours trying to research Hargreeves’s stupid history essay without the benefit of internet access, Ben really, _really_ wanted to disappear. When Diego eased open the door of room 8, Ben barely lifted his nose from his book to give him a wave.

“What’cha reading?” Diego asked. Without looking up, Ben tilted the cover towards him, and Diego whistled an acknowledgement. “Chekhov? Must have been a rough day.”

“You have no idea,” Ben muttered. “You know, I understand not giving us WiFi. But could they really not have even one goddamn computer in the whole building? I don’t have time to take the bus across town to the public library just to use their computers for an hour. You know what, I don’t even care about the War of 1812. So Canada burned down the White House, so what? Wish they’d burned down this house instead.”

The noise Diego made might have been a laugh if there hadn’t been that undercurrent of hysteria there. “I’m tempted to m- make a day trip of it this weekend and get it d- d- done before the stress can k- kill me.”

“God, same.” Ben closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head and turned the page. “Right now, though, I’m blocking it all out and doing literally anything else. The problem will still be there in the morning, and I can deal with it then.”

“Ooh, are we talking about unhealthy coping mechanisms?”

Ben looked around in time to see Klaus slide his whole skinny body through the door without pushing it open wide enough to squeak.

“I’m a pro at those,” he continued, closing the door and giving Ben a pointed raise of his eyebrows.

“We’re talking about Hargreeves’s essay,” Diego said. “Have you started it yet?”

“Huh? What essay?”

“The 1812 one,” Ben said. “Come on, Klaus, you literally took notes on it for me this morning.”

“Oh, that one.” Klaus waved a dismissive hand. “Psht. Due tomorrow, do tomorrow.”

Diego rolled his eyes so hard Ben almost thought he saw a flash of optic nerve. “You can _not_ do this one the night before, Klaus, I’m s- serious.”

“Eh.” Klaus squeezed his hand into the pocket of his pants and pulled out his squashed pack of cigarettes. “I know what would cheer you two up.”

“If it’s a joint, then n- no.”

“Pfft, no.” Klaus made a face of exaggerated denial that fooled no-one. “Okay, how about this. Here’s a party trick for you. Benny, hold these.”

He dug back into his pocket and came up with his lighter and a watermelon-flavoured chapstick, both of which he handed to Ben along with his cigarettes. Hitching his pants up over his hipbones, he sat down facing the wall and rolled onto his back.

“What are you-”

“I found out I can put my feet behind my head,” Klaus said, pulling his ankles towards his face and wrestling them around his neck. He seemed to be struggling with the tight pants; the fabric was pulled so taut over his ass that Ben could see the line of Klaus’s underwear in high definition. “Pretty sure if I just stretch a little bit more I’ll be able to suck my-”

The door swung open with a screech of hinges.

“What is the meaning of this?”

Ben whirled around to face the door, horror already flushing hot through his face. Standing in the doorway, one hand on the handle and the other on his omnipresent walking stick, was Sir Reginald Hargreeves.

It occurred to Ben, in a flash of clarity that was almost out-of-body in its force, that he was standing in a room he had no right to be in, during quiet study hours, holding a packet of cigarettes in his hand.

He saw Hargreeves’s eyes flick to the cigarettes, then to Klaus on the floor with his toes behind his ears. One of these was clearly the more pressing issue to him.

“Get up!” Hargreeves barked, striding past Ben and Diego to whack Klaus in the ribs with his cane.

As Ben looked at Diego, who was frozen in place, he saw what Hargreeves would see poking out of his back pocket when he turned around. _Oh, shit,_ he thought. _How many rules do you have to break to lose a scholarship?_

In the split second that Hargreeves was distracted hauling Klaus to his feet, Ben made up his mind. He gritted his teeth, took a breath, and shoved his injured hand into Diego’s pocket. Ignoring both the bolt of pain through his palm and Diego’s jump of surprise, he dragged out the packet of cigarettes and tucked it in under the crushed packet he already had in his other hand. By the time Hargreeves turned around, Diego had a bewildered expression and Ben had a neat handful of prohibited materials.

“What is this?” Hargreeves said, snatching the cigarettes and lighter. He examined them for a moment, then turned his gaze to Ben. “Turn out your pockets.”

As Ben produced a pencil stub, folded notebook page, and a handful of change for Hargreeves’s inspection, he dared a glance to the side and caught Diego’s eye. There was something like disbelief in his expression, underneath the panic. Ben didn’t quite know why Diego was surprised; if he was going to get caught with one pack, why not two? It didn’t make sense for both of them to get in trouble - although it did occur to Ben, as Hargreeves went through the contents of Diego’s and Klaus’s pockets, that there was a certain irony in him getting caught with both of their cigarettes when _he didn’t even smoke_.

-

Hargreeves’s office was as formidable as the man himself. All ancient velvet and dark wood, it spoke to centuries of unquestioned tradition, the kind of room to house the kind of man who believed it was his duty to break children until they turned into respectable adults.

Sitting in the straight-backed, solid-seated chair in front of Hargreeves’s giant mahogany desk, Ben realised it was his turn to be broken.

“There is a code of conduct,” Hargreeves said, perusing the contents of his filing cabinet, “which you saw before you began your education here at the Umbrella Academy. You signed this document.” He found the tab he was looking for and pulled out a sheet of paper, which he set on the desk in front of Ben. The signature at the bottom of the page was Ben’s; its illegibility told Ben he’d been in a rush to finish the paperwork while his mom was home to cosign it. 

“You may direct your attention to lines twenty-two and twenty-three: _No alcohol, cigarettes, or illicit drugs are permitted on the premises of the Umbrella Academy, nor are students permitted to partake of these substances while off the premises in school uniform._ ” Hargreeves sat down at the desk and folded his hands underneath his chin. “You had a total of twenty-eight cigarettes in your possession. Would you care to explain yourself?”

Ben opened his mouth, paused, then closed it again. What could he say? They weren’t his cigarettes, but he wasn’t going to admit that.

“No?” Hargreeves raised an eyebrow over his monocle. “You have nothing to say for yourself?”

Clenching his teeth, Ben shook his head. _Take the fall, Ben._

“Well, then.” Hargreeves pulled a notepad towards himself and picked up a pen. “I shall be writing to your parents to inform them of this. As for academic punishment, you-”

There was a tap on the door - not the door leading out to the hallway, but the one connecting each office to the next. Hargreeves broke off and frowned at the door as if it had personally attacked him.

“Yes?”

“I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, Sir.” Dr. Pogo seemed entirely uncowed by Hargreeves’s irritation. “I wonder if I might request your attention for a moment.”

Hargreeves stood up and strode through into Pogo’s office without another word. The door closed behind him and Ben was left alone with the forbidding velvet and wood, as well as the creepy goat heads that peered down at him from the walls.

It was several minutes before Hargreeves returned. He did not sit back down at his desk, but strode directly to the outer door and opened it.

“You may return to your room,” he told Ben. “I will be taking no further action with regard to your participation in this misbehaviour.”

For a second Ben just stared at him as that processed through his brain. He wasn’t going to be punished - had Pogo convinced Hargreeves to let him off with a warning? When he realised that Hargreeves was holding the door open for him and would continue standing there until he left, Ben scrambled to his feet.

Hargreeves caught his shoulder in the doorway. “Mind the company you keep, Benjamin,” he said.

_It’s just Ben,_ he wanted to say, but sensed this was the least appropriate moment to push his luck. Instead he just looked at Hargreeves, waiting for the second half of that thought.

“The Umbrella Academy is renowned for producing gentlemen and young ladies with the skills to succeed. Ninety-eight percent of our graduates go on to Ivy League schools. Do not let some misplaced sense of sympathy convince you to throw your lot in with the two percent. You are capable of better than that.”

Ben tried his best to keep the frown off his face. He wanted to ask for some clarification on that, but then Hargreeves removed his hand from his shoulder and Ben understood himself to be dismissed.

“Thank you, Sir,” he murmured, and headed for the stairs as quickly as he could, not daring to look back to see if Hargreeves was watching him.

The attic row was completely dark save for the crack of light under Diego’s door.  Ben knocked gently, and there was a scrambling noise from within before Diego called him in.

“Oh, it’s you.” Diego was visibly relieved, his hand going almost unconsciously to his belt as if to reassure his knife that it was safe. Then Ben closed the door behind him, and Diego’s face fell a fraction. “Where’s Klaus?”

Ben’s puzzled look must have been enough to answer the question and ask it right back. Diego gestured to the door with one fidgeting blade. “He ran d- d- downstairs about two minutes after you and Hargreeves left.”

“And he hasn’t come back since?”

Diego shook his head. “I’ve been listening for him. What happened w- with Hargreeves?”

_So much, and yet somehow also nothing._ Ben shrugged and ran a hand through his hair. “He read me the riot act, said he was going to tell my parents, was about to give me whatever punishment, and then… decided not to.”

“What?”

“Yeah, he-” as Ben took a step closer he realised his legs were shaking. Diego reached out and tugged him down to sit on the edge of the bed next to him, and Ben let out all the built-up adrenaline in a sigh. “Pogo came in and dragged him out for a minute, and then he came back and told me to go.”

Diego looked almost frustratedly confused. “And that’s it? That’s all he said.”

“Ye- no.” Ben shook his head. “He said something about throwing myself into the two percent. Yeah, that’s the face I made too. I don’t know. He was talking about the Ivy League, I was- I just really wanted to get out of there.”

“Yeah. I don’t blame you.” Diego put an arm around Ben’s shoulders and pulled him into his side. “Th- thank you. For- for taking my- Ben, that was-”

He seemed to run out of words in a manner entirely unrelated to any stutter. Ben turned and put his other arm around Diego too, hugging him close and pressing his face into Diego’s sweater.

“Don’t mention it.”

“I owe you big time,” Diego said, but Ben shook his head.

“You don’t owe me anything. You- it was just. It was consolidation of trouble. You know?”

“That’s such an SAT word,” Diego muttered, but Ben could feel the edge of his smile against his ear. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Still. Thank you.”

Ben just nodded, carefully disengaging himself from Diego’s arms and sitting back to stretch out the tension in his back. “Still one question, though: where’s Klaus?”

-

That remained the question all through the night and into the next day. Ben spent the night lying awake waiting for Klaus to come back, but the attic row was entirely silent save for Luther’s muffled snoring. No matter how close he cuddled Octi, Ben couldn’t manage to fall asleep. By the time he dragged himself out of bed for breakfast he was cold, tired, and beginning to feel the twitch of sleep-deprived anxiety.

“Where did he go?” Ben whispered into Diego’s ear as they filed into the dining hall for breakfast. Klaus’s room was still locked, which meant he definitely hadn’t returned to it last night; the huge old keys were loud in the locks, and having had his ears pricked for the squeak of hinges all night Ben definitely would have heard Klaus coming back.

“Uh.” Diego stopped walking, one hand at Ben’s elbow to catch his attention. “There?”

Ben followed Diego’s gaze. At the serving table was Grace, scooping eggs onto students’ plates, and to her side was one of the kitchen assistants - except this one seemed suspiciously disinterested in the job.

“Klaus,” Ben breathed.

“What the f- f-”

“Good morning, boys,” Grace beamed as they picked up their plates. “What would you like to eat this morning?”

Ben looked at Klaus, who was ladling oatmeal into bowls with the most sardonic smile Ben had ever seen. “Uh-”

“Eggs?” Grace offered him a scoop.

“Um… no thanks.” Ben grabbed a bowl and stepped in front of Klaus.

“Freshly sludged bread puke?” Klaus offered.

Ben held out his bowl. “What are you doing?”

“I’m _contributing_ ,” Klaus smirked, a thread of barely-restrained condescension through his voice, “to the _community_. I am _giving_ more than I _take_.”

It was so un-Klaus-like, and so clearly forced, that all Ben could do was stare. Had Klaus been brainwashed?

As Diego nudged Ben in the ribs Klaus leaned forward, ladle already full for the next bowl.

“I’ll tell you later.”

So saying, he turned to the next student and slopped a heap of oatmeal into their bowl, manufactured smile already back in place. Diego dragged Ben to their favourite table on the far side of the room, where they tucked themselves into the corner and put their heads together.

“Okay, _what_ is going on?” Ben hissed.

“I asked Grace what Klaus was doing,” Diego said, switching their trays and taking a mouthful of Ben’s oatmeal before pushing it away with a wince and cutting his buttered toast in half. “She just said he was helping. She w- wouldn’t explain any more than that.”

“No, I wouldn’t expect her to.” Ben picked up the other half of the toast and took a bite. “Did you hear what he said? That he was contributing to the community, something about give and take. I’m so fucking confused.”

“You and me both.”

They finished Diego’s eggs and toast and dropped their dishes on the trolley, oatmeal and all. At a loss for what else to do beyond sit and wait for Klaus, Ben pulled Diego out into the courtyard.

“He’ll see us out the window if he’s coming through the main corridor,” he muttered as they found a dry patch of grass in the sun at the edge of the garden. “I was hoping to go to the library today, but I don’t want to leave until we get to talk to him.”

“Same.” Diego lay back on the grass and shaded his eyes against the sun. “Either he’s completely lost his mind or else he’s playing some scheme.”

Ben grimaced, not daring to take his eyes off the main door as he picked nervously at his shoelaces. “I honestly don’t know which one I’d prefer.”

As it turned out, the answer was neither of the two. That night, as Ben was sitting in his room trying to piece together an essay structure without any substantial content, his door banged open.

“Can I use your window?” Klaus huffed. “I locked my key in my room, and I’m all out of hairpins.”

“Hello!” Ben said. “Wh- yes, you can- Klaus, slow down, what’s going on? Why were you serving breakfast this morning?”

Klaus groaned and flopped down onto Ben’s bed, hand dramatically thrown over his eyes. “I have detention. For a _week_. That means I get to go to class and do _literally nothing else_. I’m gonna spend the whole week cooking and cleaning and laundering, and I don’t even get to sleep in my own _bed_. There’s a spare bed in the basement with the household staff. For my _convenience_.”

It took a conscious effort for Ben to pick up his jaw. “What- why?”

Klaus’s hand shifted just enough for him to peek out at Ben. “What do you mean, why? Why do I have detention? Because I popped down to dear old Dr. Pogo’s office and told him the smokes were mine.”

“Wh- but why?”

“Because, as I told Pogues, your good nature and overactive sense of selflessness meant that you’d never admit they weren’t yours. If you hadn’t dobbed me in the moment Hargreeves walked in, you certainly weren’t going to do it just because he glared at you in private. You’re too virtuous, Bentacles.”

_Ah._ Closing his eyes, Ben let out a sigh. “You’re the two percent.”

“I’m the what?”

“I-” Ben shook his head. “Hargreeves gave me a little lecture on minding whose company I keep. He meant you.” And now, having finally understood that, Ben was furious. Who was Hargreeves to judge Klaus? Who was he to judge Ben for being friends with Klaus? At what point did the world decide that the measure of a person’s worth was in whether they went on to the Ivy League?

If Hargreeves had wanted to convince Ben to separate himself from Klaus, he’d just achieved the opposite.

“Yes, I’m the bad influence friend, we know this.” Klaus was impatient now, as if Hargreeves’s aspersions on his character were routine. Perhaps they were, at this point in his education. “The important thing is, are you in trouble?”

Ben shook his head. “No. After you talked to him he let me go.”

“Good.” Klaus relaxed again, letting his hand flop out onto the pillow to play with Octi’s tentacles. “That’s what I was hoping. I’d have been pissed if he’d still given you shit after that.”

There was a moment of quiet as Klaus plaited Octi’s nearest tentacles together and Ben considered the novelty of Klaus, apathetic Klaus, actually caring about something - and not just caring, but _violently_ caring, almost viciously, as if he were prepared to march right back down to Hargreeves’s office and give him a piece of his mind.

“Anyway,” Klaus sighed, sitting up and patting Octi’s head, “I don’t have a lot of time, I just came up here to grab a change of clothes and then I gotta go back down and make Hargreeves’s bedtime tea. It’s a pity, he’s got such a refined palate he’ll know if I spit in it.”

He hauled himself up off the bed and climbed out the window, and there was a series of thumps and muffled curses for a minute before door number 4 squeaked open and Klaus appeared in Ben’s doorway again.

“Look after this for me, will you?” He held out the huge iron key. “I just know I’m gonna lose it in the kitchen or something, and then I’ll have to buy more hairpins.”

“Sure.” Ben took the key and put it on top of the line of books at the back of his desk. “It’ll be there if you need it while I’m out.”

“Cheers, buddy. See you in class on Monday.” Klaus darted into the room to give Ben a quick hug, then ran back out the door and away down the stairs with a shout of farewell.

Ben stood from his desk and wandered over to the bed to smooth his hand over Octi’s plaited tentacles. She looked cute like that, like she had her legs crossed - and then crossed again, and again, and again.

“Was that Klaus?”

Ben glanced over his shoulder to see Diego standing in the doorway, looking towards the stairs.

“Yeah,” he said. “Just whirled in and back out.”

“Sounds like him. What did he say?”

They went into Diego’s room, where Ben relayed what Klaus had told him. When he finished, Diego slumped back against the wall with a sigh and a hand to his head.

“Jesus. My last school, when we had detention we just had to write lines.”

“Yeah, the Academy seems to be a little unusual in more ways than one.”

“I’ll say.” Diego slid sideways down the wall until he was lying on the bed, bent in half with his legs against Ben’s. “I’m amazed he went and owned up to it. No, w- wait, that sounds bad. I’m not surprised that he wanted to. I’m p- p- impressed that he had the guts.”

At this point of mental exhaustion, Ben could only manage a sigh in response.

“And he can’t even sleep up here?” Diego muttered. “Damn. I never thought I’d look forward to Monday morning math.”

Just then Dr. Pogo called for lights out from the top of the creaky stairs. Ben groaned and pushed himself up to his feet, dragging Octi by her braid.

“I’m gonna end up getting hypothermia,” he said. “I guess I could sleep in Klaus’s bed without him. Would that be weird? That’d probably be weird.”

“You c- c- c-” Diego frowned and bit down on his lip as if by punishing it he could make it obey him. “You can sleep here?”

“Oh.” Ben wasn’t quite sure why he paused; he didn’t even need to consider it. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

Diego got up and pulled the covers back so Ben could slide in towards the wall, then climbed in after him and turned the lamp off. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Ben squeezed Octi into his stomach to leave clear the careful six inches of space Diego had placed between them.

“Sorry if I snore,” he murmured.

Diego shook his head. “You don’t. It’s Klaus who snores.”

“Oh, I _know_.” Ben could just see the mirror of his own grin on Diego’s face in the faint glow of moonlight filtered through clouds and dusty window panes. “He stops if I kick him in the shins, though.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Ben turned his face towards the pillow to stifle a giggle, then a yawn. What a day. What a two days, even, considering he hadn’t slept last night. His stomach gave a faint gurgle, which could have been hunger or could have been nauseous exhaustion.

“I have some cookies I nicked from the dining hall if you want one,” Diego whispered, but Ben shook his head. Too tired to eat, too tired to speak. Just enough left in him to offer Diego a grateful smile through the dark before he closed his eyes and sank into the pillow.


	5. Chapter 5

“Get up, bitches!”

Ben pulled the blanket back from his head with a voiceless grumble. Too bright, too loud for a morning without classes. Next to him Diego was curled around Octi, his face pressed into her beak and his fingers woven through her tentacles.

Sharing a bed with Diego was very different from sharing with Klaus, as Ben had found out over the last week. Where Klaus was even more octopodal than Octi with his gangly limbs, Diego was neat and contained. He tended to roll over maybe once in the night, and aside from sleep-stealing Octi on a fairly consistent basis the most Ben had woken up to had been a leg slung over his hips, pinning him to the bed until Diego had woken up and shifted away with a sleepy apology.

Now, rather than Diego’s knee digging into his back, Ben was woken up by Klaus banging the door open.

“What?” Ben whispered, still trying to clear the sleep from his throat to make way for his voice. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is it’s Saturday,” Klaus said, “and that means two things. One: I am officially out of detention as of this second, and therefore two: it’s time to blow this joint. Out of bed, you lazy sluts, we’re going thrift shopping.”

“What time is it?” Diego muttered into Octi’s head. “If it’s before eight I’m going to punch him in the face.”

Ben peered over Diego at the alarm clock on the bedside table. “Seven fifty-five.”

“I’m punching him in the face.”

“I’ll hold him down for you.”

Klaus danced back out of the room before either of them could get up, and Diego rolled over to shove his face back into the pillow.

“I was really hoping to sleep in today,” he sighed. “What did he say he wants to do?”

Ben rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and stifled a yawn into the sleeve of his pyjamas. “Thrift shopping? I think?”

“Because we have such a great need for extra clothes, what with the uniforms and all.”

This was a valid point - they only really got to wear their own clothes two days a week. Although, Ben thought as he dragged himself along the hall to his own room and began rummaging through his closet for his one decent pair of jeans, maybe it might be nice to have some options for those two days.

“Do we at least get to eat breakfast before we leave?” he asked Klaus as they waited outside the bathroom for Diego to finish brushing his teeth.

“Nope!”

“But I’m hungry,” Ben sighed. “Why are we in such a rush?”

“Ben. Benny. Bentacles, my boy. The world is wide, and full of food. Let’s go to a nice cafe.”

The bathroom door opened and Diego snorted as he pushed past them. “Yes, let’s go spend money on a fancy breakfast when there’s perfectly good food downstairs for free.”

“You get to eat scrambled eggs and oatmeal seven days a week, Dee. Today, this day, is your opportunity to do something different. I’m craving a salmon bagel, lots of cream cheese.”

“Uh-huh.” Diego ducked back into his room and re-emerged a moment later with his leather jacket halfway onto his shoulders. “And how exactly are you planning to pay for all this cream cheese? I thought your mom cut off your allowance when you got detention.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Klaus said, leading the way down the stairs. “And then my grandma heard about it and sent me a neat two hundred bucks because she loves undermining my mother.”

“So that’s where you get it from,” Diego muttered.

“Where I get what, healthy familial love? Cause I definitely don’t get _that_ from mama.”

The two of them had such long strides, Ben had to jog down the stairs to keep up with them. Halfway down the last flight to the main foyer he felt a jerk at his foot and tripped; with a yelp, he found himself tumbling forward, one hand reaching out in a vain attempt to grab at Klaus’s shoulder.

“Woah!”

As Klaus turned and leapt out of the way, Diego’s arm flew up to catch Ben under the armpits. He staggered a step or two down, but by the time he found his footing Ben had managed to get his legs under him, and Diego’s arm was enough to support him while he regained his balance.

“Thanks,” Ben gasped, clutching at Diego’s elbow as his heart banged in relief against his ribs.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” With a grateful pat to Diego’s elbow, he looked down to see what had tripped him. His traitorous shoelaces trailed down across the carpeted step, dusty white and gleeful at his panic. Ben sighed and sat down to tie them back up.

This was one of the things he still had trouble with. Holding a pen was easier now, using a fork more or less comfortable, but the fiddliness of tying his shoes was still difficult. This wasn’t the first time they’d come undone; Ben was fairly sure it wouldn’t be the last.

“Let me,” Diego muttered, after a minute of watching Ben struggle to get the knot tight enough. He knelt down on the stair below Ben and took the laces from him, and in the next second the shoe was tied. Ben blinked as Diego turned to the other shoe. One moment they were loose laces, and the next they were a neat little bow, with seemingly no in-between: no bunny ears, no loop and pull, just a quick flick of Diego’s fingers and there it was.

“How do you do that?” Ben whispered.

“Magic.” Diego stood up and offered Ben a hand to pull him to his feet.

“I can’t work out how he does it,” Klaus said. “He refuses to tell me. It’s some sneaky ninja way of tying shoes.”

“Shoelaces, sure.” Diego rolled his eyes. “That’s a top priority for ninjas.” He kept ahold of Ben’s hand until they reached the bottom of the last flight of stairs, then let go to shove his hands into his pockets, shoulders hunched around his ears.

There was an odd little pause, and just as Ben was opening his mouth to suggest they get going Grace walked through the foyer with a giant coffee carafe in her hands.

“Good morning, boys!” she called. “Coming for breakfast?”

“Actually, we’re going out,” Klaus said. “Places to be, people to see.”

“You don’t want some toast before you head off?” Even with both eyebrows raised, her forehead barely wrinkled.

Klaus shook his head. “We’re gonna get breakfast on our way.”

She tutted slightly, but smiled anyway as she held up one finger. “Well then, just you wait one moment. Don’t move!”

As she bustled off into the dining hall with a swish of skirts, Ben gave Klaus a confused look. Klaus just shrugged back at him, eyes wide in a way that said _you expect ME to know what she’s doing?_

Before Ben could come up with a theory, Grace returned with three large paper cups balanced between her hands. She beamed, all red lipstick and white teeth, as she handed one to each of them.

“Ben, plenty of cream. Klaus, dark and strong. And Diego, just a hint of sweetness.”

Diego’s smile was shy and soft as he took the cup from her. “Thanks, Mom.”

“You’re so welcome!” Gosh, Ben wished she would pat _his_ cheek like that. “Have a good day, boys. Will you be home for dinner? I’m making chicken and wild rice.”

“We’ll be there,” Klaus assured her. “See you later, Grace.”

She waved until they were out the door; through the ripple of stained glass closing behind them Ben saw her turn back to the dining room with a spring in her step.

“That woman is the only thing stopping me from burning this place to the ground,” Klaus said around a sip of coffee. “I think I love her almost as much as my grandma.”

“Then why don’t you call her M- Mom?” Diego wondered. “I’m p- pretty sure she’d be touched.”

“It’s cute that the role of ‘mother’ is a positive one for you.” Klaus rolled the paper cup between his hands, either to warm them or to stop it from burning him in just one spot. “Okay, I will buy breakfast for the first person to find me a decent salmon bagel.”

“There’s a cafe just off Main,” Ben suggested. “I think they’re fancy enough to have salmon.”

Turning to walk backwards in front of him, Klaus pointed one long finger at Ben’s nose. “If you’re correct, Bentacles, waffles are on me.”

Diego snorted into his coffee, and Ben glanced sideways at him just in time to catch the end of an eyeroll.

“Problem, Dee?”

“Not at all.” Diego took a long sip of his coffee. “I’m not used to you being generous, that’s all.”

Klaus smacked a hand to his heart as if wounded. “How could you _say_ that? I’m such a giver, I just keep giving and giving, and then when I’m all given out I just… give some more.”

Ben tried not to choke, he really did. As Diego thumped him between the shoulders, he gave Klaus the kind of look that said he’d reached the end of his suspension of disbelief.

“You know, from anyone else that w- wouldn’t sound quite so dirty, but from your m- m- mouth it’s just filthy.”

“I mean.” Klaus’s grin was wicked. “I’m happy to give in that way too.”

Diego’s ears went bright red, and he hid his face in his cup again while Klaus laughed loudly enough to send a nearby flock of pigeons into the ear.

The cafe did indeed have salmon bagels, and Klaus gleefully bought Ben a stack of chocolate chip pancakes so large that it was more of a favour for Diego to take half than it was for Ben to give it. They sat outside, bartering the sun on their faces for the wind against their turned up collars, and Ben huddled up next to Diego’s shoulder so that the stray leaves falling through the breeze would hit their backs rather than their plate.

“So what are you hoping to buy today?” Klaus said, and didn’t wait for either of them to respond before continuing, “I need some nice pants. Maybe a sweater.”

“Don’t you have enough pants?” Ben said. “Your pants drawer is bigger than my entire closet.”

“Yes, but I keep wearing through them at the seams.”

“That’s because you buy them three sizes too small,” Diego muttered.

“Yeah,” Klaus sighed. “I guess that’s just the price I have to pay.”

“For what?”

“For looking fabulous.” Klaus tossed his hair. As it got longer it was beginning to curl back towards his head, which sort of defeated the wind that otherwise might have flowed through it; it just sort of bobbed around rather than the majestic floating that Klaus seemed to be going for.

Ben wiped his mouth and pushed the rest of the pancakes towards Diego. “If I can find a comfy long sleeve shirt or something I’d like that. Just a t-shirt with long sleeves that I can sleep in, nothing fancy.”

“What’s wrong with your Academy pyjamas?” smirked Klaus, who tended to sleep in a tank top and boxers at most.

“Buttons,” Diego cut in. “I don’t know how you can stand it, Ben, I tried for like one n- night and got _real_ sick of the buttons digging into my ribs.” He nudged Ben in the arm and tapped his own chin just below the corner of his mouth.

“Exactly.” Ben ran his thumb over that spot on his own face and came away with a smear of chocolate. “Definitely couldn’t sleep in my own room with less than that, but you two are warm enough I don’t really need thick pyjamas anymore.” He sucked the chocolate off his thumb and swiped it over his chin again to check for any remaining traces.

“I’m glad to be your human furnace,” Klaus said. He popped the final bite of his bagel into his mouth and sat back with his hands behind his head to watch Diego cut the last pancake into little squares. “I tell you what, though, those beds really aren’t made for two. Let alone the extra tentacles.”

“We don’t have to share,” Ben offered. “I can sleep in my room, it’s alright.”

Klaus shook his head. “I wouldn’t know what to do with a whole bed to myself. Do you think Pogo would notice if we moved your bed into my room and pushed them together?”

“Absolutely yes,” Diego said. “I’m pretty sure the furniture is bolted to the floor.”

“Well, okay then.” Klaus pushed his chair back and stood up as Diego finished the last of his pancake. “What if we took our mattresses off the bed and put them together on the floor?”

Diego snorted, stacking the plates and picking them up to take inside. “Yeah, in whose room? Who has that much floor space between the bed and dresser?”

“No-one,” Klaus said. “That’s the point.”

Diego gave him an inquisitive look, but waited until he’d dropped their plates off at the bussing station inside before saying, “Explain.”

“We have an empty room,” Klaus said. He jerked his head in the direction of the main road, and for a moment they walked in silence.

“Room 8,” Ben ventured, when it became apparent that Klaus considered this sufficient explanation.

“Bingo.”

“No way.” Diego shook his head emphatically. “Klaus, if you get caught in there again you might get _expelled_.”

Klaus blew a loud raspberry and flapped a dismissive hand in Diego’s direction. “Which would trouble me exactly _how_ much? Anyway, let’s just not get caught. Easy.”

The slap of Diego’s hand against his own forehead was loud enough to make Ben jump. “Easy, sure. Cause n- not getting caught worked out so well for us last time.”

“Yeah,” Ben agreed, “Hargreeves or Dr. Pogo could walk in at any moment.”

“Not if we lock the door behind us.” Klaus threw a smirk over his shoulder as they turned the corner towards the shopping street.

Ben glanced sideways, and was relieved to see Diego looked as baffled as he felt.

“With wh- what key?”

In answer, Klaus poked two fingers into his curls and came out holding a bobby pin. He waggled it at the two of them for a moment before sliding it back in, where it seemed to be just hanging out more than really doing anything for the shape of his hair.

“Not all of us are t- tr- truants like you, Klaus.”

“Hah.” Klaus turned to walk backwards for a moment, then fell into step beside Ben to put the wind at his back again. “It’s not hard, I’ll teach you. Once you can pick it open you can also pick it shut, and then we’ll all be able to get in and out without anyone being able to walk in on us.”

Ben pursed his lips, mentally searching through that for holes. “What if Hargreeves has a key?”

“He might.” Klaus tilted his head as if in thought. “I considered that. But he didn’t have it in his hand when he walked in on us, did he? So I’m thinking he doesn’t. Or at least, he doesn’t carry it around with him. Why would he? It’s not like he polices the building making sure the locked rooms are still empty.”

“True.” Ben turned the idea over in his head for a moment. “Sure, I guess. If you can teach us how to pick the lock and close it again, I’d be game to try it.”

“Awesome.” Klaus snapped his fingers at him. “Dee, you in?”

Diego sighed and shook his head, but it was more defeat than disapproval. “Yeah, alright. What do we do if Hargreeves comes along? Or Pogo?”

“Then we’re fucked,” Klaus shrugged.

But Ben shook his head. “Hargreeves always has that loud cane, and there’s no-one else who would be on our floor that shuffles like Pogo. As long as we’re quiet when we’re in there, we’ll hear them coming.”

“And then we just what, jump out the window?”

“Yes!” Ben tapped the back of his hand against Klaus’s chest. “Out the window and down the fire escape, just enough that he can’t see us from the door. If we leave the window open whenever we’re in there then we’ll have time to jump out before he gets the door open. We’ll just have to remember to close it behind us.”

“Alternative suggestion,” Diego said. “Use a doorstop so he can’t get the door open.”

“Oh.” Klaus stopped walking. “Right. Yeah, that would work too.” He took a couple of little running steps to catch up with Diego, who was striding out ahead. “How do _we_ get in, then?”

“We knock.”

“And whoever’s already in there removes the doorstop,” Ben finished.

“Precisely.”

“Just make sure you knock _before_ you pick the lock,” Klaus said, “otherwise I’m jumping out the window, doorstop or no.”

He put his weight against the heavy door of the thrift shop and held it open for them. The break from the wind as it swung shut behind them was blessed relief, and Ben shrugged out of his jacket with a sigh.

“Okay, where do we start?”

Klaus spread his hands to encompass the whole expansive store. “Pick a side and work your way across!”

So saying, he darted into the nearest aisle, which was marked _Ladies’ blouses_. Ben glanced at Diego, who shrugged and led the way over to the men’s section.

Twenty minutes later, as Ben was investigating the less-worn jeans, the racks rustled under his hands and Klaus’s head popped through. Ben squeaked and jumped backwards into the woman behind him, who gave him a dirty look and clutched her purse tighter to her hip as she walked away.

“’Sup, Bentacles? Found anything good?”

Ben held up his two potential pyjama shirts for Klaus to see. “One of these might work. What about you?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes.”

The hangers squealed against the rack as Klaus pushed his way through the jeans to Ben’s side. The end of the aisle was _right there_ , Ben sighed to himself.

“Yes, I have _many_ things.” Klaus’s arm was piled up to his shoulder with clothes, shirts and sweaters and something that looked like a muumuu. “Will you come with me to try these on?”

Ben nodded, gave one last look at the jeans he’d been considering, and decided there was no harm in trying them on. By the time he had them off the rack and folded over his arm, Klaus was already halfway down the aisle, hips swaying to the tinny 80s music trickling from the overhead speakers.

In the fitting rooms, Ben considered the two shirts. The blue one was nice and soft, but the green one arguably fit better. Maybe too well? He didn’t want something that was too fitting, or it might get uncomfortable in the night.

At a loss, he pulled on the jeans as well. Not because it particularly mattered how they looked with a shirt that was going to become pyjamas, just to see them in some semblance of an outfit. Perhaps Klaus would be able to advise him on the shirts. Ben unlocked the fitting room door and poked his head out to see if Klaus was out there.

“Oh, there you are.” Diego came to a halt as he passed Ben’s door and backpedalled a step or two to stop in front of him. “I lost you.”

“Yeah, Klaus dragged me off to try things on.” Ben pushed the door open so Diego could see the shirt and pants. “Thoughts? The shirt might be too tight.”

“Looks nice,” Diego shrugged. “Do you like those jeans?”

“I dunno.” Ben peered down at his feet. “They’re comfy at the top, but they’re maybe a bit long.”

“Yeah, maybe. The knees look a little bit worn.”

Ben pulled a face. “They’re the best that were there.”

Diego shrugged again. “They’re not bad. If they’re cheap, I’d say yeah. Is Klaus still in here?”

“I think so. Klaus?”

There was a rustle from the stall at the far end of the row.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today-” the door swung open, “to _check me the fuck out_.”

For a long second, they stared at each other. Diego looked at Klaus, and Klaus waggled his eyebrows at Ben, and Ben wondered how the _almighty fuck_ one wedding dress could have so many frills.

“Nope.” Diego turned away and walked directly out of the dressing room.

“Aw, c’mon, Dee! You know I’m totally fuckable in white. _You’ll be wanking over this tonight!_ ”

He turned back to Ben, grin almost as sharp as those collarbones peeking out above the ruffles.

“You did not have that when you went in,” Ben said, still slightly lost for words.

“Nah, it was hanging up inside. Someone left it in there, God knows why. They missed out on a total steal!”

“I-” Ben ran an eye from the silk roses at Klaus’s shoulder down to the crumpled train swirling around his feet. “I genuinely don’t know what to say.”

Klaus smoothed his hands over his hips, flattening out the creases so that the fabric shone under the fluorescent lights. “It just feels _right_.” He gave a little twirl, which succeeded mostly in tangling the train around his ankles, then stumbled to a halt facing Ben, hands on hips to consider him.

“What?” Ben didn’t like the look in Klaus’s eyes.

“Shirt, yes,” Klaus said. “Jeans, _even more yes._ ”

“Really? They’re a bit long.”

Klaus waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, absolutely. You’re not wearing them like _that._ I’m turning them into shorts for you, and you’re wearing them with that shirt, and you’re going to look gorgeous as fuck.”

Ben hunched his shoulders around his ears as if that could hide the furious blush sprinting across his face. “This was gonna be a pyjama shirt.”

“Nope.” Klaus shook his head firmly, gathering his skirts up to bustle over to Ben and pluck at the shoulders of the shirt with a critical finger. “Too nice for PJs. You had another shirt in there, right? Get them both.”

“I-” Ben could feel the flush deepening through his cheeks the more Klaus examined him. “I guess so-”

“Good, excellent, sorted.” Klaus spun on his heel, ruffles flying around him, and minced back into the dressing room. “I call this shopping trip a success!”

-

They emerged from the thrift store with two large shopping bags - neither of which, thankfully, contained the wedding dress.

“You didn’t get anything, Dee,” Klaus complained.

“I have enough clothes,” Diego said. “I looked at some nice leather jackets, it was f- f- f- interesting enough.”

“You do look good in leather,” Klaus grinned, nudging his shoulder into Diego’s. “I saw a really nice sex harness in the back section that would look _drop-dead sexy_ on you.”

“That was a utility harness,” Diego insisted, “it was military surplus, they wouldn’t sell a s- s- s-”

“No, it was definitely a sex harness.” Klaus skipped ahead, swinging the shopping bags back and forth. “I can totally picture you in one of those and some leather pants - or maybe dark denim, ripped up the thighs - nipple rings on full display-”

“ _Klaus!_ ” Diego cried, at the same moment that Ben choked, “You have nipple rings?”

“No!”

“Sadly, no,” Klaus sighed.

“W- how would you know?” Diego bristled, though the pink gathering at the tips of his ears told Ben it was more from embarrassment than anger. “Do you w- watch me shower or something?”

“No, but that’s a great idea if you’re into it. C’mon, Dee, you can’t expect me _not_ to notice how gloriously defined your pecs are in that turtleneck.”

He wasn’t wrong, Ben had to admit, sneaking a sideways glance at Diego’s chest. He was no expert in piercings, but he felt like even the most discrete ring would cause some small distortion in the smooth curve of the fabric.

“It’s a shame,” Klaus continued mournfully. “You would look truly incredible with a little gold ring through your nip.”

“I mean, yeah.” Diego shrugged, seeming to have regained some of his usual bravado. “I’ve kind of always wanted a nipple ring.”

“You should get one.”

“I should.”

“You should get one _today._ ”

“Wh-”

Klaus swung one of the shopping bags out to the side, narrowly avoiding a young woman and her stroller. While Diego was busy apologising to her, Ben followed the direction Klaus was indicating and felt his jaw drop.

“Oh, you’re serious.”

“I’m serious,” Klaus grinned. “What do you say, Dee?”

“Huh?” Diego turned back to them, then looked past Klaus’s pointing hand and baulked.

“I’ll pay,” Klaus added. “I will willingly, _gladly_ pay for the privilege of vajazzling your tit.”

“That’s not how that word works,” Ben muttered.

For a handful of seconds, Diego just gaped. Then, squaring his shoulders, he turned to Klaus and raised a challenging eyebrow.

“Let’s do this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: how many Misfits references can I fit into one chapter?  
> Me:  
> Me: so many


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a content warning for reference to canon-typical death.

“Does it hurt?”

“Mm. Not really. Kinda throbs a bit if I m- move too much.”

“Yeah… You sure you’re okay?”

“’M fine. Just tryna forget about the whole n- n- _ugh_ \- the whole needle part.”

Ben hummed and leaned against Diego’s shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting way. What an afternoon. They’d made it as far as the piercer’s back room, all sterile tiles and metal, and then Diego had taken one look at the long needle and slumped sideways into Klaus’s arms with a whimper.

“It seems like you don’t want this,” the piercer had said, looking warily at him.

“I do,” Diego had insisted, though the intensity of it had been somewhat ruined by the dizzy way he was clinging to Klaus’s hand. “Just d- don’t let me see the n- n- needle.”

So it had been Ben’s job to sit by Diego’s head and keep him distracted while the somewhat bemused piercer cleaned, marked, and pierced his nipple. She’d handed him a lollipop afterwards and made him stay sitting in the tiny studio until he’d eaten the whole thing, because, “If you walk out of here and pass straight out on the sidewalk my name will be mud.”

Now Ben and Diego sat side by side on the fire escape, legs through the railing and feet swinging back and forth below them. Four floors down, in the street beyond the Academy gates, a woman and her three small children strolled along the sidewalk. One of the kids looked up and caught sight of them, her mouth falling open at the appearance of two teenage boys perched on the side of a building, one of them with his shirt open to let the breeze cool his chest. Ben waved, and after a moment of astonishment the girl waved back before trotting away to catch up with her distracted mother.

“How do you think Klaus is going with his essay?” Ben wondered as the family disappeared around the corner.

Diego snorted. “Do you really think he’s actually doing his essay?”

“It’s due on Monday. I would hope he’s doing it.”

“Five bucks says he freaks out and d- drags us across to the library tomorrow to use the computers.”

Ben laughed and shook his head. “He’d probably just go to the nearest cafe and do the whole thing on his phone.”

“Mm, yeah. You’re right. I don’t know how he can write on a screen that small.”

“Oh yeah, same.” Ben arched his back, shifting from side to side to get his butt into a more comfortable position on the cold metal. “You know, I think today was the first time I’ve really used my phone since term started. No, wait, that’s a lie. I took it to McDonalds that one time to email my mom.”

“I haven’t used mine at all, except to play music. I mean. It’s not like I’ve got anyone who desperately wants to keep in touch with me.”

Ben looked at him sideways, trying to figure out what Diego was feeling before imposing an emotion of his own. As usual, though, there was a guard down over anything that might otherwise show on his face.

“No friends back at the orphanage?”

Diego rolled his eyes. “Yes, so m- many friends. We were all such good buddies.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Diego squared his shoulders. “It didn’t suck that bad, you know? It’s just most of the younger kids get adopted, and if they don’t then they g- grow up and age out and join gangs, and you know if you stick with those people then you’re g- g- gonna end up in the gang too. Had like three different people just w- waiting for me to say the word so they could jump me in.”

“Jeez, it’s that bad?”

“That far South? Yeah. I mean, I w- wasn’t completely alone. I maybe had like three really good friends, the last couple years there. And then one joined a gang, and one ended up g- getting adopted. _Adopted,_ and he was fifteen by then. You’d think they’d go with a younger kid who hasn’t had a chance to be f- f- ruined yet.”

“Good for him,” Ben murmured. “So it was just you and the third friend?”

Diego scrunched up his nose for a moment, then shook his head.

“Oh. Did you two have a falling out?”

For a moment Ben thought perhaps that was so obviously correct that it needed no confirmation. Then Diego sniffed, shook his head, and pushed himself back from the railings.

“Nah. Nah, the b- b- the girl who joined the gang really wanted her in too. Came back with a couple guys and tried to jump her in, by force.”

Ben wasn’t sure what _jumping in_ meant, but anything done by force sounded nasty.

“Do you know how they jump girls into gangs?” Diego asked, looking down at Ben with the kind of coldness born of hard-won emotional detachment. When Ben shook his head, Diego pursed his lips and nodded. “Good. You don’t want to. But it d- didn’t go well.”

“Did she end up in the gang?” Ben had the sudden feeling he didn’t actually want to hear the answer.

“No.” Diego turned and pushed the window up behind them. “She ended up dead.”

He climbed through the window as Ben’s heart fell faster than his jaw. The knife spinning in Diego’s hand was more restless than usual, like it was itching to dig itself into a memory instead of wood. Ben thought about the way Diego used his knives, how overwhelmingly they were a tool for creation, how rarely he used them to destroy. He thought about the drawing mannequin, with its delicate fingernails. He thought about the letters Diego carved into dressers and tables, K’s and B’s and occasionally D’s, but more than anything else the letters E.P., carefully styled and painstakingly detailed until they almost seemed more the point of any piece of furniture that bore them than holding clothes or books or plates.

Ben scrambled up and followed through the window. “Diego-”

“I wanna listen to music,” Diego interrupted him. “Let’s go hang out in m- m- my room.” He bent down and pulled out the doorstop, then cautiously opened the door and peeked out into the hall for any sign of Pogo - or worse, Five - before leading the way out and along to his own bedroom.

“I can’t wait until Klaus can teach us how to lock the door,” Ben said under his breath. “It doesn’t feel safe just having the doorstop.”

Diego grunted his agreement, and as soon as they were safely shut in room 2 he flipped out his knife and embedded it in the desk beside his little mannequin. “D’you think you’re gonna be able to do it?”

Ben cocked his head for a moment, then hopped up onto Diego’s bed and kicked off his shoes to cross his legs in front of him. “What do you mean?”

In answer Diego held up one hand over his shoulder, not looking away from the mannequin where he was posing it to lean on the handle of the knife like an oversized sword. He pinched all of his fingers together and twisted his hand around. “Fine motor skills. How’s your grip?”

“Ah.” Ben looked down at his right hand, with its puffy pink scar that still protested anything fiddlier than a fork. “Well, I’ve just about got the hang of a pencil now, so maybe it won’t be too bad?”

“Maybe you’ll just n- need a chaperone,” Diego said. His tone of voice was impossible to judge, but when he glanced over his shoulder at Ben he was grinning.

Ben leaned back against the wall while Diego retrieved his phone from the desk drawer and turned it on. It took a minute or so to boot up, which wasn’t particularly surprising given that Ben was fairly certain it was the same model as his own first phone. Finally Diego turned and slouched over to the bed to flop down next to Ben, opening up his music app.

“What do you feel like listening to?” he muttered. “This thing has shit speakers, but it plays.”

Ben shrugged. “I’m cool with anything. What’s your favourite song?”

“Hmm.” Diego scrolled through the list. “I don’t really have a favourite. Oh, I’ve had this one on repeat recently.”

Ben craned his neck to see what Diego was selecting, but before he could catch a glimpse of it the screen went dark.

“Ah, it does that,” Diego sighed. “Don’t worry, it’s still playing.”

Sure enough, the phone gave a small pop of static and began to play.

_“Miss mythical,_ _  
_ _She’s like the wailing wall-”_

“Oh, this is a good song,” Ben nodded.

“Yeah. It reminds me of Klaus.”

If it hadn’t been for the little squeaking noise he made as he clamped his mouth shut, Ben might not even have even noticed the way Diego’s cheeks went up in flames. He wasn’t entirely sure whether it was common sense or embarrassment telling him to leave that particular line of mortification alone, but instead of commenting on the steam pouring from Diego’s ears he said, “It is quite Klaus-ish, isn’t it? Probably the bit about passing notes.”

“P- p- - - yeah.”

“Or setting fire to magazines,” Ben continued, “which is _absolutely_ something Klaus would do if given half an excuse.”

Diego laughed at that, and the balance seemed to be tipping back from hysteria to genuine amusement so Ben caught his eye and gave him a grin.

_“Someone like you don’t come around every dynasty-”_

As the final chorus finished Diego picked up his phone to check the next track, but pushing the buttons only made the screen flicker and the music lag a beat. Diego sighed and held down the power button until the whole thing fell silent in his hand.

“Your phone seems kinda tired,” Ben grimaced.

“Yeah.” Diego set it carefully down on the bedside table. “It’s had a long life. It might be approaching retirement soon. Or, y’know, d- death.”

“Do you want me to grab mine? We can play music off that.”

Diego shrugged. “Sure, if you want.”

So Ben darted two doors down the hall to fetch his phone. When he came back Diego was lying on the bed, one foot crossed over the other knee and what looked like an offcut end of a wooden rail in his hand. He was scraping off the varnish to reveal the pale wood underneath, working his methodical way around with short, quick flicks of his blade.

“What are you working on?” Ben asked as he pushed the door shut behind him.

“Dunno yet.” Diego didn’t look up from the wood. “Haven’t f- figured that out.”

Ben hummed an acknowledgement and sat down at the desk so that he wouldn’t jostle Diego.

“Play your favourite song,” Diego said.

“My favourite,” Ben murmured. Opening Spotify, he sighed. “Well I would, but. WiFi.”

“Ah, yes.” Diego nodded sagely. “That’s what happens when you have fancy internet m- music apps rather than ripping everything from YouTube and keeping the MP3s on your phone.”

“I’ve never been much of a fan of piracy,” Ben admitted.

Diego laughed. “If I didn’t pirate shit, I’d have n- no entertainment.” He flicked his knife, sending a long curl of wood flitting through the air. “Obeying the law is a luxury of the rich.”

That was a philosophy he’d need to put some thought to, so in lieu of an opinion Ben gave a non-committal hum.

“I only have like three songs downloaded on Spotify,” he said. “Oh- oh hey!”

“What?” Diego looked up from his wood cutting, which was beginning to take a slightly rounder shape under his blade.

“This was my favourite song when I was a kid,” Ben said. “I found it again a couple months ago, it was the biggest Throwback Thursday of my life.”

He hit play and slid the volume up to full as the beat kicked in.

_“She’s a five foot ten in catsuit and bambi eyes-”_

Diego raised an eyebrow. “What. The hell. Is this.”

“Westlife!” Ben turned his phone so Diego could see the screen. “They were a thing here, right?”

Diego squinted at the album art for a moment, then shook his head. “Never heard of them.”

“Wow.” Ben let the phone fall into his lap. “I went _nuts_ to this song when I was like. Six. My whole class in Ireland was really into Westlife.”

“You lived in Ireland?”

“I’ve lived everywhere. Just for a couple months at a time. San Francisco’s home, though, that’s where we always come back to.”

_“Guess I failed to love you,_ _  
_ _And you’re taking it out tonight-”_

The pull of that key change was too strong to resist, and Ben found himself jumping to his feet without really meaning to.

_“Am I supposed to leave you now,_ __  
_When you’re looking like that?_ __  
_I can’t believe what I just gave away,_ _  
_ _Now I can’t take it back-”_

Diego laughed, but it was more delighted than mocking. Something in Ben took it to boldness, shimmying and swinging his hips in a way that might have looked sexy from someone a little less dorky.

_“I don’t wanna get lost,_ __  
_I don’t wanna live my life without you,_ __  
_Am I supposed to leave you now,_ _  
_ _When you’re looking like that?”_

“What is going on in here on this day?”

Ben whirled around to see Klaus standing in the doorway, one hand on the frame and the other on his hip, a giant smirk on his face.

“I knew there was a party animal somewhere in there,” Klaus said. He kicked the door shut behind him and gestured towards Ben where he was retreating back towards the desk. “No, don’t stop. What are we dancing to?”

“Eastlife,” Diego put in from the bed.

“ _West_ life,” Ben corrected him, then squeaked and dropped his phone onto the sheets in surprise as Klaus grabbed his hand and dragged him forwards.

“Westlife.” Klaus ignored Diego’s snort of laughter and took Ben by the hips to pull him one way and another. “Is this what the kids are listening to these days?”

Ben rolled his eyes. “This song is older than I am.” He couldn’t quite tell if he wanted to push Klaus’s hands off him or pull them tighter, so he settled for patting his wrists a bit.

“Ah, a golden oldie.” Klaus took some hint Ben hadn’t meant to give, removing his hands from Ben’s hips and lacing their fingers together instead. That was worse, Ben thought, with a flush of panic he didn’t quite understand. Klaus didn’t seem to care that Ben couldn’t dance in the slightest, nor that Diego was chortling at them from behind his carving. As the next chorus hit he dragged Ben all the way into his chest, too close and tight for the bounce in his step to be entirely comfortable.

_“Am I supposed to leave you now,_ _  
_ _When you’re looking like that-”_

“This is catchy!” Klaus said. “You have good taste in music, Bentacles.”

“Better than his taste in d- d- dance partners.”

“Ouch, rude.” Klaus finally, thankfully, released Ben and turned to Diego. “Do you want a go then, Mr. Stabby?”

Diego held up his hands defensively, wood carving in one and knife in the other. “No thank you. I like my toes n- n- untrodden.”

Klaus pressed one dramatic hand to his chest. “You wound me. C’mon, Deedee, it’s Saturday night.”

“It’s literally three p.m.”

“Details, details. Come on. Knife down-” he plucked the knife from Diego’s hand, heedless of his protest, and set it on the bedside table, “vandalism away-” the carving followed, leaning against the base of the lamp, “and now we dance.”

Diego’s face looked mutinous as Klaus pulled him to his feet, and Ben bit down on his own thumb to stifle a giggle. Klaus was completely ignoring both Diego’s reluctance and the beat of the music, eyes closed and smile wide in a parody of bliss as he wrapped his arms around Diego’s waist and swayed from side to side.

“Isn’t this nice?” he cooed, waltzing them in a slow circle. “Diego, I never knew you were such a good dancer. I dare say you’re as light-footed as I am light-fingered! Don’t we make an elegant pair?”

Sitting at Diego’s back, Ben couldn’t hear what he growled into Klaus’s ear. He definitely saw Klaus’s grin, though, and the exaggerated way he shivered in Diego’s grip.

“Oh, kinky!” he cried. “Only if Ben joins in, though.”

Ben was fairly certain Diego had said nothing even remotely sexual, but Klaus had the uncanny ability to twist anyone’s words into a blush through Ben’s cheeks.

“For fuck’s sake, K- K-” Diego shoved Klaus away and strode over to the window, grabbing his knife off the bedside table as he passed. “I need a smoke.”

“Careful you don’t catch your nipple on the roof,” Klaus smirked as Diego pushed the window up.

Diego shot a scowl at him over his shoulder and yanked the two sides of his shirt together, fixing one button in place before sliding over the windowsill and hoisting himself up out of sight.

“Partial nudity really suits you!” Klaus called after him.

He turned back to Ben with a Cheshire grin, hands on hips as if to say _didn’t I do a good job?_

Ben sighed and closed Spotify before it could start playing _Rock DJ_ , which was entirely the wrong mood for the moment. “You really have to stop antagonising him.”

Klaus flapped a dismissive hand. “He likes it.”

“I’m not so sure he does,” Ben said. “You ever notice his nicotine consumption goes up when you tease him?”

There was a pause. Klaus turned to look at the window.

After a moment, “... Huh.”

“Mhm.”

“Huh,” Klaus repeated. “My mother was right.”

“About what?”

“I don’t deserve friends.”

Ben’s eyes rolled before he could stop them. “Not to contradict your mother, but she’s wrong.”

That made Klaus laugh, a bark of surprise that spiked painfully loud in the small room. “Not that you’re contradicting her or anything.”

“Klaus.” Ben leaned back against the pillow to better look at him without cricking his neck. “You have no sense of boundaries and you can push people way past their limits without even meaning to. But you’re not some monumental asshole. I know you care, otherwise why would you throw yourself into a week of detention to save my butt?”

Klaus blinked at him. “Because it was my fault in the first place?”

“ _That’s what I’m saying._ You could have been selfish and let me take the blame, but you didn’t. You’re an incredible friend, Klaus. The fact that you have zero brain-to-mouth filter doesn’t negate that.”

Klaus looked down at his feet for a moment, then up at the window. “Um. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Take your time.” Ben reached over to pick up Diego’s piece of half-carved wood from the bedside table and settled back on the pillow while Klaus scrambled out the window and up onto the roof.

He debated straining his ears to try and catch a hint of the conversation above, but at this distance from the window and with a breeze whistling past outside he didn’t have a hope. Besides, it felt wrong to eavesdrop on one of Klaus’s rare moments of sense. Instead he turned Diego’s carving over in his hands while he waited for one or other of them to drop back through the window.

It was still mostly oblong, the little piece of wood, rounded at one end but otherwise not particularly defined in shape. One side seemed to be becoming a face - those looked like eyes. Big and round, like an owl.

There was a soft tap on the door. Ben looked up from the carving, momentarily disoriented. Diego was on the roof. Klaus was on the roof. Who else could possibly be wanting into the room?

_Octi_ , his brain supplied stupidly. A tenth of a second later common sense caught up with him and he shook his head, jumping up off the bed and setting the owl back on the bedside table as he cast around for anything suspicious that shouldn’t be lying about in plain view. No cigarettes or knives on the desk. On a thought that was at least fifty percent flashback, he shoved the window sash down so that the others couldn’t slide back in and come face-to-face with Hargreeves or Dr. Pogo. That done, he crossed to the door and pulled it open to see-

“Vanya.”

“Hey.” She looked slightly startled, like she hadn’t been the one to walk over and knock on the door. She peered past Ben into the room, tiptoeing ever so slightly to make up the difference between her eye-height and Ben’s shoulder. “Is it just you in here?”

“Ah-”

“I thought I heard music… and talking…”

Ben winced. Preservation instinct told him to say _yes, just me_ , because that was the easiest way to deflect away from the truancy currently taking place beyond the window - but it was a shitty lie to tell. Ben had been that person at his old school, the person who was always told _no, nothing going on here_ , and it had sucked, and he wasn’t willing to be the one who did that to Vanya.

“No, uh.” He scratched an ear, aiming for nonchalance and missing it by a mile. “The others just… stepped out for a moment.”

“Oh. Right.” She shifted slightly from one foot to the other. She’d had something else to say, Ben realised, but had lost her nerve.

“Do you- um. Do you wanna come in?”

“S- sure.” She shrugged and nodded, and when he stepped back she slid through the open space like a shadow. “This is Diego’s room, right?”

Ben nodded. “It’s the sunniest and also the tidiest.”

When she turned to face him there was a slight smile on her face, like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to be amused. “Who’s the messiest?”

“Klaus, of course.”

“Oh, right!” She laughed for real this time. “Yeah, I should have guessed that.”

She seemed more at ease now, perhaps reassured that Ben wasn’t about to ridicule her for daring to think she could hang out with them. If she’d waited a moment longer to let her guard down, maybe she wouldn’t have jumped quite as violently when Klaus’s foot hit the window.

“Holy _sh-_ ”

“Oh hell.” Ben froze in a split second of indecision. It was too late to do anything about Vanya seeing Klaus, but with any luck he could still keep the secret contained within this room before Klaus fell to his death. He darted back to the door to slam it shut, then sprinted across to the window and shoved it up to allow Klaus to tumble through.

“Why was the window closed?” Klaus cried, curling up into a ball on the floor to rub his knees. “I could have _died-_ ”

He looked up at Ben, saw him pointing, and followed that finger to crane his neck around and see Vanya. He stared up at her, and she gaped down at him, and they just looked at each other like that for a moment.

“Ah,” said Klaus.

“Hi, Klaus.”

“Hi, Vanya.”

Ben stuck his head out the window and looked up to see Diego peering down from the chimney.

“Everything alright d- down there?”

“Vanya’s here,” Ben said.

“Oh. That’s why the window was shut.”

“Yeah. I thought you’d realise that meant to wait.”

Diego rolled his eyes. “You know Klaus never looks where he’s going.”

“Silly me.”

They shared a grin, and Ben stepped to the side so that Diego could shin down the chimney and swing himself inside. He landed a far sight more gracefully than Klaus, and turned to face Vanya with a degree of neutrality that Ben wouldn’t quite have expected from him.

“So,” he said. “Welcome to the exclusive club of people who know about the roof. Please don’t tell anyone about it.”

She shook her head. “No, of course not. Do- do you- is it safe up there?”

“One hundred percent no.” Klaus swivelled to lean back against the radiator under the window. “Do you wanna come up?”

Diego shot him a sharp look, but Vanya was shaking her head again.

“No thank you. I think I’m alright down here.”

“Good.” Diego crossed his arms, still eyeing her with an edge of suspicion. “The only four people who know about it are in this room. If anyone else finds out, I’ll know who-”

“I won’t tell, I promise!” She looked frantic now, almost scared. “It just sounded like you were having fun and I wanted to ask if I could join!”

That seemed to surprise Diego. He blinked at her, opened his mouth, then closed it again and looked at Ben as if to request a translation.

“I invited her in,” Ben said. “She just wanted to hang out, she’s not here to bust us or anything.”

Diego glanced down at Klaus, who narrowed his eyes and leaned forward to fix Vanya with that squint. “Can you play the Star Wars Cantina theme on your violin?”

Vanya looked taken aback. _Poor girl,_ Ben thought. She’d have to get used to Klaus’s non sequitur lifestyle if she was going to survive on the even-numbered side of the hallway.

“I don’t know it,” she admitted, “but I could probably learn?”

Klaus pursed his lips for a moment, then shrugged amicably and sat back against the radiator. “I’ll take it.”

“Okay,” Diego said, and held out his hand for Vanya to shake. “Good to have you with us.”

-

That night, after they’d all gone down for dinner and Vanya had slipped off back to her own room with a shy, grateful smile, Ben realised he had a decision to make. Klaus was back from detention, and rooms 2 and 4 were both occupied again. Ben had his pick of which bed to share.

Would Diego be offended if he went back to sharing with Klaus? Would Klaus feel replaced if he stuck with Diego? Would it be insensitive to flip a coin?

Klaus, ever the serendipitous one, made the choice a little easier.

“How’s your tit, Dee? Ready for some casual nipple play?” He made a show of reaching across towards Diego’s chest, and just about got stabbed for his trouble.

“I will cut your fingers off,” Diego growled. “No-one is touching my chest for the next six-to-eight weeks.”

“But after that it’s fair game, right?” Klaus waggled his eyebrows, then laughed as Diego’s scowl deepened. “Benny, you’d better stick with me for the next little while. One poorly-timed sex dream in Diego’s room and you’ll wake up missing a hand.”

Ben choked on air and doubled over, gasping for breath while Diego thumped him on the back and Klaus cackled loud enough to earn himself an indignant shout from room 5.

He had to admit, there was something comfortable about being back in Klaus’s room among the fluttering drawings and the faint smell of incense. Ben didn’t feel like he had to keep carefully still like he did with Diego - not that Diego would mind if he moved, but it felt rude to be the only one tossing and turning when Diego slept so still. Klaus, on the other hand, couldn’t stay in one position if he tried. The moment the lights were out, he tugged Ben in towards his chest and wrapped his arms tight around him.

“Mmm, hey.” He snuggled his face into Ben’s hair with a sigh. “Do you know, I woke up at least once every night while I was down there and freaked out thinking I’d kicked you over the side of the bed.”

Ben grinned and wove his fingers into the fabric of Klaus’s t-shirt. “You know if you did that I’d just drag you after me.”

“I mean, obviously. Bentacles.” Klaus wriggled one of Octi’s tentacles up into Ben’s face and tickled his nose with it until Ben giggled and pushed him away.

“Do you really think we should put our mattresses in room 8?”

He felt Klaus’s shrug and the tilt of his head against the pillow. “It’s worth a try. Gotta be more comfortable than squishing into a single bed, right?”

That was probably true, although Ben did think - not that he’d ever admit it - that there was something nice about sleeping like this. Pressed close to Klaus, a large enough part by necessity that he didn’t have to think too hard about what the other part was.

He lifted his face from Klaus’s shirt so he could breathe. Had there been a little more moonlight, they probably could have seen each other through the dark; as it was, Klaus’s chin was a surprise when it bumped against his nose. There was a moment of laughter and apologetic hands, one of which almost ended up poking Ben in the eye.

“I bet Diego doesn’t stick his fingers up your nose while you’re trying to sleep,” Klaus said.

Ben stifled a giggle into Klaus’s arm. “No, he sleeps military straight.”

“Diego? Straight? That’ll be the day.”

Ben almost had a response to that, but then he yawned and Klaus promptly jabbed a finger into the roof of his mouth.


	7. Chapter 7

“Nothing’s happening.”

“It takes a minute. Keep going.”

“I don’t think I’m doing it right.”

“Twist your hand a bit - _yeah_ , like that.”

Ben made a frustrated sound between his teeth. “My wrist hurts.”

“So did mine the first few times. You’ll get the hang of it.”

“Okay, but,” Ben sat back on his heels and flexed his arms to work the tension out, “it’s seriously not doing anything. I can feel the pins moving, but they don’t stay.”

Klaus dropped his needle and thread and leaned to the side to better see what Ben was doing. “That means you’re not holding enough tension. Turn the bottom one a bit more and try again.”

Ben sighed and returned to the bobby pins sticking out of the lock. It was hard enough trying to make the tumblers inside move without being able to see them, but having to do all the tricky wiggly bits with his left hand was adding an extra layer of frustration.

“Am I ever going to be able to use this hand normally again?” he muttered as his palm gave a twinge sharp enough to skew the lever sideways. The lock popped back upright, sending both bobby pins clattering to the floor. “Ugh, fuck it. I give up.”

Klaus made a sympathetic noise through the needle held between his lips. “It’s alright, it takes a bit to learn. Take a break and try these on.” He slid Ben’s thrifted jeans across the floor and returned to stitching the strap of the shirt he was working on.

Ben held up the jeans, which were now cut off at about the knees. With a self-conscious glance towards the top of Klaus’s bowed head, he slipped off his pants and stepped into the jeans as quickly as he could. Klaus was very much not looking, but Ben couldn’t help but feel horribly aware of his Spiderman briefs anyway.

“How short do you want them?” Klaus said, glancing up from under his eyebrows as he knotted the thread and snipped it off.

Ben shrugged. “I dunno, how short do you think? I don’t know what looks good.”

“Benny, you could take them to the hip seam and I wouldn’t complain.” He shuffled forward on his butt and reached out to pinch the outer seam at the middle of Ben’s thigh. “How about there?”

“Sure, I guess? You’re the expert here.”

“You bet your twink ass I am.” Klaus pulled a pink-tipped pin from the felt turtle at his side and stuck it through the seam to mark his place. That done, he sat back and stretched his arms over his head, creating a long line of skin all the way from the grey and white stripes of his pants to the lacy hem of his denim crop top. Perhaps the jacket over the top was an attempt at some sort of modesty, but to Ben it more served to highlight how naked Klaus’s ribs were under the leather.

“So what now, you just cut them to size?”

“Almost. I’ll show you - take ’em off.”

How could Klaus be so unembarrassed in asking him to strip down half naked in his bedroom? It took all Ben’s willpower to keep the blush out of his cheeks as he dropped the shorts around his ankles and sat hurriedly on the bed to preserve some sense of privacy for his underpants.

“What you do is,” Klaus explained, either oblivious to or wilfully ignoring Ben’s shyness, “you mark how long you want them to be, but then,” he flipped the jeans inside out and picked up a sharpie, “instead of cutting _at_ the line-” the rest of that sentence seemed to get caught up on the way to his mouth as Klaus became absorbed in the exact science of measuring and adjusting the trajectory of his new hemline. He couldn’t pay attention in math to save his life, Ben thought, but he knew the precise angle necessary for a natural-looking cuff. He was _wasted_ on Dr. Pogo’s calculus problems.

Just as Klaus was working his scissors through the thick inner seam, the door squeaked open.

“Klaus, have you seen B-” Diego stopped, catching sight of Ben sitting on the bed. “Oh, hey.”

“Hey.” Ben shifted his hands to cover Spiderman’s face a little better. “What’s up?”

“Uh.” Diego glanced between the flash of web visible between Ben’s fingers and his pants lying on the floor. “Nothing, just w- w- w- just hadn’t seen you today, that’s all.”

“Close the door, Dee,” Klaus said, not bothering to look up from his scissors, “my tailoring methods are a pro-piety secret.”

“I think it’s _proprietary_ ,” Ben said.

“There’s too many R’s in that,” Klaus said. “I like my version better.”

“What are you two doing in here?” Diego asked, peering sideways at Klaus like he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.

“Tailoring,” Klaus said, “keep up. Try those on, Bentacles.” Sitting up, he tossed the shorts at Ben. “They might be a bit long still, but I figure better to give them room to fray. We can always cut more off later.”

Ben shimmied the shorts up over his legs and stood up to hike them into place around his hips. The cut ends began to roll a bit around his thighs, curling up almost enough to expose the cotton edge of the pockets.

“Wow, it’s-” Ben considered his own knees. This was far more leg than he was used to showing off. “They’re _very_ short.”

“Hmm.” Klaus stroked his chin, scissors dangling from one pinkie, needle pinched between finger and thumb. He looked the picture of a fashion designer; he’d have been more at home in a French boutique than the musty Academy attic. “I do believe we’ve just found your signature style. What do you think, Diego?”

“It’s n- n- _hey, that’s my jacket!_ ”

Klaus looked only slightly surprised as Diego grabbed him by the leather lapel.

“I _thought_ it had wandered off somewhere,” Diego snarled, knife appearing in his hand. “Give it back, Klaus.”

“Ooh, undressing me at knifepoint?” Klaus batted his eyelashes, entirely unperturbed in the manner of a man with zero sense of self-preservation. “How did you know that was my kink?”

Ben could have sworn he saw the smoke blow from Diego’s ears. For a moment he just glared at Klaus, and Klaus fluttered right back at him.

“Just keep it,” Diego growled, releasing Klaus with a shove. “God, it’s not enough you steal my school shirts-”

“I didn’t have any clean ones!” Klaus protested.

“ _That’s because you never do your laundry!_ ”

“I’m too pretty to do laundry,” Klaus sighed, swinging the scissors around his finger until Ben felt compelled to reach out and take them away from him lest he poke someone’s eye out.

“No-one’s too pretty for personal hygiene, not even you.” Diego opened his mouth like he had something else to add, then abruptly flushed bright red. “I- God, _fuck!_ ”

Whirling on his heel, he wrenched the door open and stormed out with a scream of frustration muffled behind his teeth. Ben gaped after him, mentally replaying the last ten seconds to try and find the end of that fuse.

“I…” Klaus tilted his head and scratched one perplexed finger against his ear. “I feel like I should have a better idea of what I did wrong there.”

Ben shook his head. “Nothing more than usual. I mean- sorry, fuck- let me go find out.”

He darted out of the room after Diego, taking care to close the door behind him so Klaus wouldn’t feel he needed to follow. Room 2’s door was still rattling in its frame, and Ben pressed his ear to the wood for a moment before knocking.

“Go _away,_ Klaus-”

“Not Klaus,” Ben said.

There was a pause.

“Oh.” The lock grated open, and Diego’s eye appeared in the crack of the door. “That’s okay then.”

He locked the door again once Ben was safely inside, then faceplanted onto the bed with a groan. Ben cast around for something helpful or comforting to do, but the room was short on options so he just perched on the desk chair and waited for something to happen.

When Diego had done nothing but smother himself in the pillow for a long minute, Ben cleared his throat.

“Do you… want to talk about it?”

Diego grunted, sighed, then rolled sideways just enough for Ben to get a glimpse of one sullen eyebrow.

“Nothing to talk about.”

“You seem kind of upset,” Ben ventured.

“Yeah, well.” Diego pummelled the pillow into a more comfortable shape under his head. “He just keeps g- getting up under my skin.”

“I’ve told him to stop doing that.”

That seemed to surprise Diego. “What do you mean?”

“Well… yesterday, right, after we went shopping, when you went up on the roof and Vanya was there when you came back-”

Diego snorted. “You mean when Klaus tried to launch himself through a closed window and n- n- almost gave me a fucking heart attack?”

“Yeah.” Ben pinched the bridge of his nose to keep back a sigh at the very memory of it. “But before that. He followed you up onto the roof, right? What did he say to you?”

The knife spun quietly in Diego’s hand for a moment while he frowned in thought.

“He gave me a cigarette,” he said. “And then he said he was impressed that I was either saintly enough or stupid enough to put up with his shit.”

“Oh, for-” Ben smacked himself square in the forehead. “That’s not the kind of apology I was hoping for. Look, Diego, I know he feels like an asshole for the crap he says to you, but for some reason he can’t stop himself from doing it every time.”

“Yeah, I know.” Diego shrugged. “That’s not the problem, I know he has zero fucking filter for the b- bullshit his brain spins out twenty-four-seven.”

Ben blinked at the set of Diego’s chin. “If that’s not the issue, then what is?”

With a groan that was a bit too close to desperation for Ben’s liking, Diego shoved his face back into the pillow.

“Nothing,” he mumbled. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

There was defeat there, underneath that coat of indifference. Ben had seen Diego angry, seen him remorseful, seen him calm and eager and determined, but never defeated, never this kind of sad resignation. It didn’t sit very well on him.

Ben wasn’t entirely sure he believed Diego on the _nothing_ side of things, but he knew a person in need of a hug when he saw one. Pushing the chair back with just enough of a scrape so as not to surprise him, he crossed to the bed and climbed up next to Diego, then lay down and placed a careful arm over his back. Diego grunted a token protest but didn’t move away, so Ben tightened that arm to pull Diego into him, side-to-chest.

After a long minute of just that, Diego seemed to realise Ben wasn’t going to push him to talk. Turning his face out of the pillow he watched Ben watch him, both of them quiet, just looking.

Diego broke the silence first. “I think you might be a m- m- mind reader.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You always seem to know what I’m thinking, even when I don’t want to tell you.”

Ben couldn’t help the twitch of a smile in the corner of his mouth. “You got me. I can hear your thoughts.”

“Yeah?” Diego gave him a little grin in return. “What am I thinking now?”

Ben watched the way Diego’s eyes flicked back and forth across his face, the little quirk of that lingering grin, the perfect softness through his brow that distinguished true calm from masked tension.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Hm.” Diego closed his eyes. “That’s t- t- a pity.”

“Are you gonna tell me?”

Without opening his eyes, Diego shook his head. “Maybe another day.”

Ben hummed and tapped his hand against Diego’s back by way of acknowledgement. No need to press for it now; if it was important, Diego would keep that maybe.

“The shorts look nice, by the way.”

Ben laughed, a little surprised. He’d forgotten about the shorts.

“Thanks.” He pushed his leg forward just enough to rub the cut-off edge against Diego’s hip. “I think Klaus is trying to turn me into a fashion icon.”

“I mean.” Diego nudged his hip back into Ben’s retreating thigh. “We gotta get that Asian-American representation in the modelling industry, right?”

That made Ben snort hard enough to startle Diego’s eyes open, both of them laughing.

“Well yes,” Ben admitted, “but I’m not sure I’m the right man for the job.”

“I think you could rock the catwalk,” Diego said, mouth pursing down into a little shrug. He couldn’t hold it long - his nose crinkled up with the force of his grin, and Ben lifted his hand from Diego’s shoulder to push his face into the pillow.

“Stop flattering me, you’ll give me an ego.”

“You couldn’t be big-headed if you tried, Bentacles,” Diego mumbled into the heel of Ben’s palm. “Not while Klaus is in the room for comparison.”

Ben rolled his eyes, but there was good humour in it. “I guess I’d better keep him around, then.”

“Well, yeah.” Diego pulled Ben’s hand away from his face and patted it back onto his waist. “That’s my plan, at least.”

-

Math class wasn’t a bad way to start the week, first thing on a Monday morning. Dr. Pogo’s housemaster mode always lingered after the weekend, and having just come from Grace’s freshly-baked cinnamon scones the hour almost felt like an extension of breakfast - just with added calculus.

Klaus had his feet up in Ben’s lap, textbook perched on his knees and pencil twirling between his fingers in a style reminiscent of Diego’s knife. “I don’t get this,” he whispered, just loud enough that Vanya turned around to give him a sympathetic smile but not so loud as to attract Five’s attention from the row in front of her.

Ben peered over to see which problem Klaus was working on. The page was as much doodle as it was diagram, and Ben could only identify where Klaus was up to by the concentration of scribbles around question four.

“Area of a sector?”

“Sure.” Klaus jabbed the pencil into the page. “I guess? Is that what this is?”

“Yeah! So you grab the formula from page eighty-six-”

“But why?” Klaus dropped the pencil onto the book and dug his heels into Ben’s thigh to give himself the leverage to shift his butt forward in his seat. “Why do I need to know the area, what do I need it for? When will I ever use this?”

“Well, uh,” Ben scratched his ear and shot a covert glare at Five as he turned around to roll his eyes in their direction. “Say you had a pizza and you wanted to know how much you were eating-”

“All of it,” Klaus said. “I’m eating the whole pizza.”

“Okay, but say you _weren’t_ -”

“I would rather stuff a whole large pizza in my face than figure out pi-theta-r-whatever.”

Ben sighed and tried a different tack. “You know that pencil skirt you got at the thrift store?”

“The red one? Yeah, what about it?”

“What if you wanted to make it not a pencil skirt? What if you wanted to make it like that one Allison has with the silver panels?”

Klaus cocked his head for a moment like he was trying to gauge Ben’s angle, then picked up his pencil. “I’d need to cut a bunch of slits and stitch the panels in there to make the flares.”

“What shape would those panels be? Triangles?”

“Nah, not quite.” Klaus pulled Ben’s notebook towards him and turned the page to doodle. For once, Ben didn’t mind. “They’d kind of be triangles, but with a bit of a curve at the top so you get a nice shaped hemline.” He turned the page towards Ben to show him the shape he’d drawn.

“Right, okay. And so like. You wouldn’t want the skirt to be too heavy, right? So you’d want to know exactly how much extra fabric you were putting in so that you could make it a lightweight one.”

Klaus shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, ideally I’d match the existing fabric of the skirt-”

“Of course, yeah, and you’d want to make sure that the amount of extra fabric you were adding wouldn’t make it too heavy to wear-”

“Yeah, exactly-”

“So you can use this formula to work out how much fabric is in that extra panel.” Ben pushed his own textbook towards Klaus and circled the sector formula at the top of the page with the lightest swipe of his pencil.

“ _Woah_.” Klaus pulled the book towards him and looked back and forth between it and his own scribbled page as if making sure they really contained the same information. “Really? That’s the same thing?”

“Yeah.” Ben took his notebook from Klaus and carefully outlined the rest of a circle from the wedge Klaus had drawn. “Each panel’s basically a really thin slice of pizza, right? So you can use the sector formula to figure out how much of a slice you have, and that tells you how much extra fabric you’re putting in for each panel.”

“Holy shit.” It was as if a light had come on behind Klaus’s eyes; he scribbled down a messy diagram that Ben supposed was a skirt, then annotated some extra sectors onto it. “So if the skirt is like, 24 inches long, and the panels are that shape-”

“Thirty degrees,” Ben supplied, setting his protractor over Klaus’s drawing. “Convert it into radians like we learned last week.”

He talked Klaus through the rest of the problem, bouncing between his own work and Klaus’s and leaning over to check his numbers each time Klaus’s pencil poked into the back of his wrist. As he turned the page to the next set of problems he glanced up and caught Diego’s eye.

_“Holy shit,”_ Diego mouthed at him, hidden behind one cupped hand. Ben widened his eyes and pressed his lips together to contain a smile.

As Klaus finished his third theoretical skirt redesign, Dr. Pogo came around to check their progress.

“Which problem are you up to, Klaus?”

More or less ignoring the question, Klaus turned his notebook around to show Dr. Pogo his scribbled annotations.

“If I have eight fifteen-degree panels, that’s the same amount of fabric as four thirty-degree panels, right? I dunno if I did this right.”

Dr. Pogo frowned at the page, perhaps trying to decipher Klaus’s handwriting or wondering when his trigonometry lesson had turned into a textiles class. “Is this one of the exercises from page eighty-nine?”

“We had a breakthrough on sectors,” Ben cut in, before Klaus could ramble on any further. “So we made up some extra problems to practise. Real-world application in dressmaking.”

For a moment, it almost looked like Dr. Pogo was about to tell Klaus off or redirect him to the prescribed order of problems. Then, with a careful eye over Klaus’s working, he set his own pen to the page.

“150.80, that’s exactly right. Tell me how you make a dress with sectors.”

-

That night, long after lights out, the rooms on the even-numbered side of the attic row were all empty. Their occupants sat on the roof, watching the stars move through the night under a thin cloud of cigarette smoke.

“I think the wind’s changing, Bentacles,” Diego said. “You wanna move to the other side?”

Ben considered it, then shook his head. He was too well settled on the shingles to be bothered shifting at this point; besides, the smell of Klaus’s particular brand of cigarettes had come to be almost comforting by now. Ben still wouldn’t want to smoke one himself, but the occasional whiff of smoke on the wind wasn’t too unpleasant.

“I’m almost out,” Klaus sighed, fishing the crumpled packet out of his pocket and flipping it open. “I’ve got like three more. Maybe Grandma’s gonna be sending me money tomorrow…”

“Lucky you,” Diego muttered. “That was my last.”

Klaus grunted as he lit the cigarette with a hand cupped against the wind. For a moment it looked like that was the extent of his sympathy; then, breathing in deep and letting the smoke fly to the breeze, he took the cigarette from between his lips and silently handed it to Diego.

Diego made a quiet noise of surprise as he took it. “Thanks, bro.”

“As the old adage goes,” Klaus said sagely, “ _puff puff pass._ ”

Diego snorted a laugh and shuffled closer to give the cigarette back, bumping as he did so into the point of Klaus’s elbow where it was bent up to cushion his head with a hand against the shingles. With a mutter of discomfort, Diego reached over to plonk the cigarette between Klaus’s lips and then grabbed his arm to maneuver him into a more agreeable position. They ended up lying hip-to-hip, Klaus’s head on Diego’s arm and an intermittent plume of smoke rising into the air above their faces.

It was strange, Ben thought, watching them like this. They typically spent so much time needling at each other that it was easy to forget they were actually friends. But here, now, in the soft fall night with a sprawl of stars overhead, Klaus held his lit cigarette to Diego’s lips and the burning end glowed like a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience with this update, friends. I've been super sick the last few days, and it's been hard enough to exist, much less write or edit. I'm on the mend now though, and my brain will hopefully re-engage in the next few days.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: time to write the most important chapter that I have been dreaming about since I started this whole story  
> Pain and Executive Dysfunction: bitch you THOUGHT
> 
> (Hopefully it's worth the wait)

Fall looked different in every city. In San Francisco, it was comfortably warm and almost as fresh as spring; in Copenhagen, you could judge the locals from the latecomers by whether they scrambled to collect the last of the light or welcomed the early evenings with the knowledge of anticipated _hygge_.

From the fire escape of room 8, fall was a bluster of leaves and a chill whipping up against the bricks so that Ben curled back into his hoodie with a shiver. It was an odd sort of day - he’d gone down for breakfast and been informed that Hargreeves was out of town on business, so with double history cancelled they all had an extra two chapters of assigned reading and a surprise morning off. Ben had taken his toast and retreated to the far end of the attic to contemplate a new plan for the morning.

He jumped as a loose shingle clattered onto the railing beside him, and looked up in time to see Diego slide down off the roof to join him.

“Oh, hey,” Ben said. “Were you just hanging out up there?”

“No, I took the long way around because _someone_ didn’t remove the doorstop when I knocked.”

“Oh!” Ben glanced over his shoulder at the door on the far side of the room. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you. The door’s not even locked.”

Diego gave an affable wave of his hand and sat down to slide his legs through the railing next to Ben. “So I noticed. No worries, it was a fun climb. How’s your m- morning going?”

“Debating doing the reading for Hargreeves now or taking a leaf out of Klaus’s book and putting it off until the point at which I start to regret my life choices.”

Diego snorted. “It’s adorable that you think Klaus ever regrets his life choices.”

“ _No ragrets_ ,” Ben quipped.

“Hah. M- mood.”

“He would totally get a tattoo of that as some kind of ironic joke.”

“Oh God, you’re right.”

Ben grinned, dry lips stretching uncomfortably in the cold, and Diego laughed back at him. Then, suddenly serious, he leaned in and grabbed Ben’s chin.

“Hold still.” He pinched a finger and thumb against Ben’s cheek and came away holding an eyelash.

“Oh. Thanks.”

Diego kept his hand in front of Ben’s face, eyelash perched on the tip of his forefinger. After a moment, Ben realised his participation was required here.

Closing his eyes, he thought for a moment. He’d never been much good at making wishes - he’d tried for a puppy one time, and when that hadn’t worked he’d settled into a reassuring habit of wishing for mundane, intangible things. Each birthday candle asked that everyone enjoy the party; shooting stars hoped for a good night’s sleep. He’d thrown a coin into a fountain in Paris for a trip up the Eiffel Tower and even that had been a touch too ambitious, but he had enjoyed the walk around the base nonetheless.

He didn’t have words for what he wanted right now. What he did have was this feeling in his chest, a pressure that seemed to come from the inside out, growing and breathing until he thought he might burst with the potential of it. Taking that weight and pushing it out from his heart, Ben thought, _this, just this,_ and blew the eyelash away.

“Was it a good one?” Diego asked.

“Maybe,” Ben shrugged. “We’ll see.”

“Well, don’t tell me what it is or it won’t come true.”

_I couldn’t if I tried._ Ben smiled and nudged his shoulder against Diego’s.

They sat in companionable silence, watching the street wake in the way they often did on quiet mornings. Diego turned his knife over in his hands, not spinning so much as just revolving. It was a contemplative thing, the movement of important thoughts. There was only so much a person could mask, and Ben sometimes wondered whether Diego was so attached to his knives because they worked so well as an extension of his face.

“What are you thinking about?” he ventured, when the number twelve bus had rumbled past the end of the street three times.

Diego took another couple of spins to think, then sighed. “Just life. The future. I dunno.”

It was an odd train of thought for him, and Ben turned his head just enough to signal interest while he waited for Diego to continue.

After a moment Diego sighed again and scratched a nail along the side of his face, tracing the line of the longest scar back through his hair.

“I’m on my own now. As of t- today. Once you turn eighteen The State doesn’t care anymore, _so long, hope we didn’t f- fuck you up too bad_. Like, I knew I was gonna age out, and obviously I knew it was gonna be today, but I d- d- don’t think I was really ready, y’know?”

It took a solid few seconds for Ben to formulate a response. This was a heavy, important subject, and it deserved a serious reply. When he finally opened his mouth, however, all he could think to say was, “It’s your birthday today?”

“Yep.” Diego ran a finger along the top of the railing, flicking the peeling paint off the rust. “I know, I’m old.”

“No, it’s- me too.”

“Huh?”

Ben tapped a hand against his own chest. “I’m eighteen today too.”

“Today’s your birthday?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh. Fancy that.” Diego’s surprise slid into a smile. “This feels like a good time to give you this, then.” He reached inside his leather jacket and from the pocket next to his heart drew out something small and round, which he pressed into Ben’s hand. “Happy Birthday.”

Ben opened his hand and turned it over between his palms. Pale wood, carefully carved to a smooth finish and detailed in minute flicks of Diego’s sharpest blade. Ben turned it around, caught sight of those big round eyes nestled among the embrace of tentacles, and stopped. Not an owl - an octopus.

“Wow,” he breathed. “Diego, I-”

“Do you like it?”

“Like it? I _love_ it, are you kidding?” He beamed up at Diego, the octopus clutched between his hands. “Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome.” Diego grinned back at him, and his knife gave a delighted twirl before slotting back into his belt. Then he leaned forward, pushed Ben’s hoodie back from his face, and kissed him.

Ben nearly dropped the octopus. For a moment he was too stunned to do anything more than blink at the closeness of Diego’s cheekbone, mind whirling over _him_ and _mouth_ and _warm_ and _my lips are really chapped right now._ Then Diego sat back, wide-eyed and flushed, and Ben cleared his throat like he could turn his brain’s engine over that way.

“Um.”

Diego didn’t say anything, just bit his lip and twitched a hand towards his belt. He seemed to resist that impulse, though, and with a visible effort folded his hands together in his lap.

“Wh-” Ben tried again. _That was nice,_ he thought, and then _I didn’t know you wanted to do that,_ and then _I didn’t know_ I _wanted to do that._ There was something else swimming underneath all of those, though. “What about Klaus?”

Diego cocked his head to the side. “What about him?”

“I dunno, I-” Ben thought about the two of them lying on the roof, sharing a cigarette with Klaus’s head on Diego’s arm. “It seemed like there was something there between you.”

“It did?” It was difficult not to read the lift of Diego’s eyebrows as hope.

Ben shrugged. “Kind of.”

Diego considered that for a moment, then sighed. “Yeah. You’re right. Him too. B- but also you, y’know?”

“Yeah.” Ben leaned forward to rest his arms on the railing, took a deep breath, and decided there was no reason not to jump all the way in. “Same here.”

“Really?”

“Mhm.” Ben offered Diego a shy smile, then turned to watch the birds fly across the courtyard.

“He’s infuriating,” Diego muttered.

Ben snorted. “God, yeah. But so cute.”

“ _God_ , yeah.”

They sat in companionable silence for a while. Ben swung his legs, and Diego spun his knife, and the little wooden octopus snuggled in against the line of Ben’s scarred palm.

Then Diego, eyes on the giant oak in the park across the street, said, “I’ve never kissed a boy before.”

Ben couldn’t help the breath of a laugh. “I’ve never kissed _anyone_ before.”

“Oh.”

“Mm.”

“…”

“… Can we do it again?”

Diego was Ben’s first kiss. And his second. And his third, too.

-

“Hey.” Ben pushed the door open and picked up a pencil stub from the desk to lob at the back of Klaus’s head. “Get up.”

Klaus grunted and twisted his head away from the pillow. He wasn’t sleeping, apparently - his phone was in his hands, screen too bright to be comfortable to the eye in the gloomiest corner of his room. “What?” he said. “I’m writing.”

“Klaus? Working on an assignment of his own volition?” Diego put in from behind Ben’s shoulder.

“Don’t insult me,” Klaus snorted. “It’s PoeFinn, you _heathen_. What do you want?”

“We’re going out,” Ben said. “Birthday brunch.”

“What?” Klaus rolled over and sat up. “How did you know?”

Ben frowned. “Know what?”

“That it’s my birthday?”

Diego made a surprised noise. “It’s your birthday too?”

“What do you mean?”

Ben looked back and forth between the two of them. “It’s Diego’s birthday as well. And mine.”

For a moment they all stared at each other.

“Well,” Klaus shrugged, “that’s weird.”

-

They ended up not at a fancy restaurant or even the nice cafe off Main, but at Denny’s.

“Free Grand Slam, bruh,” Klaus said as they slid into a booth. “That’s what I call a fiscally responsible birthday.”

“When are you ever fiscally responsible?” Diego muttered.

“When I’m _fucking broke_.”

“When you spent all your money on cigarettes,” Ben cut in.

“Is that not what I said?”

Diego laughed into his coffee while Klaus feigned offense over the fork he was spinning around one finger.

“So did your grandma send you any money?” Ben asked, once they had placed their orders.

“Mm.” Klaus fished his phone out of his pocket. “Great question. Let me see.”

There was silence for a minute as he tapped away at the screen. Then the fork clattered to the table.

“What?” Diego looked up from his cup.

Klaus neither moved nor spoke.

“Klaus, _what?_ ” Ben pressed.

“Incredible,” Diego said. “Klaus is silent.”

Klaus just shook his head, mouth open.

Ben poked him in the arm. “Okay but seriously, what is it?”

“Email,” Klaus muttered. “There must be an email.”

There was more furious tapping, both thumbs flying now, and Ben just caught Diego’s eye and gave him a little shrug. This was not the first time they’d found themselves floundering in the wake of Klaus’s brain, and he was fairly confident it wouldn’t be the last.

“Wow,” Klaus breathed. “Wh- wow.”

“Okay, for real though,” Diego said. “What is going on?”

Klaus cleared his throat. “So, uh. How much do you wanna know about my fucked-up family? Cause I can like, edit this.”

Ben shrugged. “Lay it on me.”

“There’s nothing you could say that would shock me,” Diego added. “Like literally. Nothing.”

“Okay.” Klaus cleared his throat again and squared his shoulders. “Here goes: _‘My dear Klausie,’_ \- don’t laugh-”

“Not laughing,” Diego murmured, and Ben nodded.

_“My dear Klausie,_ __  
_I do hope you see this email before you do anything else today. Not just because I want to be at the top of your mind as much as you are mine, but because I would like your adulthood to begin in a better fashion than your childhood has ended._ _  
_ _First and foremost - Happy Birthday. Your eighteenth birthday is no small thing, and to have reached this milestone with the disposition that you possess after the hardships that you have had to endure is a testament to the strength of your character. I am deeply, fiercely proud of you. I hope you know that.”_

Klaus closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then shook himself and continued.

_“Secondly, I feel I cannot let you begin this new stage of your life without having heard at least some of the apologies that you deserve to hear. I cannot atone on anyone’s behalf but my own, and I hope (though sadly not with too much expectation) that you will eventually receive all the amends that are due to be made. For my part: I am so deeply sorry for the home in which you grew up. I am sorry that I did not fight harder to remove you from it. You did not get much of a chance to know your father, but I knew him well, and I know he would have been severely disappointed in the person my daughter turned into after his passing. You did not deserve to bear the force of her grudge. I always wanted you with me in my home - at first you and your mother both, and then later just you, as I began to conclude that perhaps she was not as kind to you as befits a mother to her son. I kissed your bruises, Klaus, but I did not do enough to prevent them. I am sorry.”_

Klaus’s voice cracked and he stopped with his lips pressed together into a hard line. Ben rubbed a hand across his back, feeling the deliberate control of Klaus’s breath as it lifted his shoulders. Klaus did not shrug him off, just set his jaw and scrubbed a hand across his eyes.

_“This brings me to the issue at hand. You may recall that I have remarked to you on more than one occasion that you will likely get little in the way of inheritance from me. This is absolutely true - at the point at which I pass on, it is unlikely that I will have any real wealth to speak of. Were you to ask your mother, she would swear up and down that your grandfather squandered the lot on poker and whiskey in the last years of his life. She certainly inherited his intellect, God bless her cotton socks and the shoes that support them._

_“If you pop into the bank and check your account, you should find the contents of the private account I opened the afternoon you were born. I don’t want you to have to wait until I die before you start living, my darling, and there is no force in Heaven or Earth that could entreat me to give your mother a chance to contest that money in my will. Use it as you choose. Do things that will make you happy. And for Pete’s sake, if you love me at all, don’t you dare let your mother see a penny._

_“I adore you with the force of a thousand suns, Klaus. Call me when you have access to a phone._

_“Love,_ _  
_ _Grandma.”_

Klaus tapped at his phone again and set it down on the table, then looked up at Diego and Ben.

“Damn,” Diego said. “How m- much did she give you?”

Klaus unlocked his phone and handed it to Ben without a word. It took a minute of blinking at the account balances for Ben to understand what he was seeing.

“Seven hundred and fifty-three thousand, two hundred and eighty-nine dollars,” Ben read out, “and seventy-four cents.”

“The nine seventy-four was already there,” Klaus said.

“Holy shit,” Diego whispered.

“Yeah.”

“Holy _shit,_ ” Ben added.

“ _Yeah._ I- I didn’t even think she _had_ that kind of money.”

“What did she do for a job?” Ben asked.

Klaus shook his head. “Nothing, she just went to church a lot.”

“What did your grandfather do for work, then?”

“He was an engineer.”

“There you go.” Ben clicked his fingers. “Engineers make mad cash.”

“What are you gonna d- do with it?” Diego asked.

Klaus shrugged. “I don’t know. What… what do people do with that kind of money?”

“My mom would probably be able to give you some advice,” Ben said. “I can email her, or set up a Skype appointment or something if you want.”

“Yes please.” Klaus took his phone back from Ben and gave it one last bewildered look before sliding it back into his pocket. “If you leave it all up to me I’ll probably just spend it all on food.”

“Speaking of,” Diego muttered as the waitress arrived with their meals.

“Oh hell yeah,” Klaus said. “Happy Birthday, you two - breakfast is on me.”

-

“How did she even manage to save $750,000?” Klaus wondered that night, when the lights were all out but their brains couldn’t switch off.

Ben brushed a curl of Klaus’s hair out of his face and wriggled closer in the dark. “Well, engineering is a _very_ lucrative business.”

“Yeah, but still-”

“Also interest,” Ben pointed out. “She probably only put in a little over half that amount, and eighteen years of compound interest did the rest.”

“Yeah, but _still_ ,” Klaus said. “Okay, let’s call it four hundred grand. That’s still a shitload of money to take out from under Grandad’s nose.”

Ben thought for a moment. “She said something about poker, right?”

“Oh yeah,” Klaus said. “Grandad was a hell of a gambler, until he drank himself to death.”

“From what I know,” Ben hedged, “people who are used to gambling away huge sums of money typically don’t notice when other huge sums of money disappear right in front of them. They just assume they gambled it. Especially if they’re drinking too.”

“That sounds like Grandad,” Klaus admitted.

There was a thread of bitterness through his voice, and Ben patted Klaus’s face to check that his forehead wasn’t too crumpled. Klaus’s next breath was almost a laugh, and he caught Ben’s hand on its way down to tug him into a more comfortable position.

“She wouldn’t say anything about it on the phone,” he said. “I asked her where it came from and she just said ‘savings,’ like there was no more to it than that.”

Klaus had ducked out in the middle of brunch and returned to their table almost in tears, joyful and overwhelmed, with his phone clutched to his heart. They had managed to get very little out of him; he’d just slotted himself into Ben’s hug and smothered hysterical giggles against his collarbone until the waitress had brought their bill. Now he wove his thumb between Ben’s fingers in a contemplatory way.

“I feel like I should get you and Diego birthday presents,” he said. “But I don’t know what.”

“Don’t worry about me.” They were snuggled so close together that their noses bumped as Ben shook his head. “But Diego yeah, I think he’d appreciate it.”

“Would it make up for what an absolute shit I am to him?” The corner of Klaus’s mouth tugged up against Ben’s face, so that was either a smirk or a smile. Ben touched a hand to the other cheek - yes, that was a smile. Whatever tension had flared up over the weekend seemed to have eased back into the usual teasing in both directions.

“I think it would definitely help,” said Ben. “You could get him a new phone - his finally died yesterday.”

“Ooh, yeah. I could do that.”

“It doesn’t have to be fancy,” Ben hurried to add. He could feel the shape of Klaus’s words against his mouth; they scarcely needed voice behind the breath to be understood.

“Oh, honey,” Klaus smirked. “With the cash I’ve got? He’s getting fancy.”

Ben groaned. “ _Don’t_ spend all your money on expensive stuff, even if it’s for other people. We’ll talk to my mom-”

“Bentacles,” Klaus interrupted him, “I’m kidding. I’ll get Diego a nice, middle-of-the-market phone. Respectable, but not embarrassing. Deal?”

Ben nodded and almost bonked against Klaus’s forehead. “Deal.”

“Good.”

It felt faintly ridiculous, the way Klaus worked his fingers in between their chests to take Ben’s hand and shake it. Ben giggled, and then Klaus giggled, and then they were stifling each other’s laughter with frantic hands over their mouths.

When they’d calmed down and were just breathing into each other’s palms, Ben peeled Klaus’s fingers away from his mouth and said, “Diego kissed me today.”

A puff of surprised air against his scar. Ben shifted his hand so Klaus could take an easier breath and whisper, “Did he really?”

Ben nodded. “This morning, on the fire escape.”

“Before we went out?” Klaus sounded surprised. “I would never have guessed.”

Ben shrugged, but didn’t respond. He wasn’t sure if kissing was supposed to change a friendship - he suspected it probably should - but nothing felt different with Diego. The rest of the day had been perfectly normal. They’d gone to their afternoon classes as usual, sat together in the dining hall like always, and after dinner Diego and Ben had found their favourite study carrel in the library and gone over the English homework together, hip-to-hip at the small desk but otherwise no cuddlier than usual. At the top of the attic stairs they’d parted with their typical hug, and Ben had gone into Klaus’s room. Now Klaus wriggled his fingers out of Ben’s grip and settled his hand under his head, his elbow tucked in against his chest to keep from poking Ben.

“How was it?”

“What, kissing?” Ben had to take a moment to think about that. “It was nice. Wetter than I expected.”

Klaus snorted a laugh. “Is he particularly slobbery?”

“I dunno,” Ben shrugged. “It’s not like I have anything to compare it to.”

“Oh, was it your first kiss?” Klaus didn’t quite seem surprised, like Diego had. Instead, he was almost excited - like polite interest, but more genuine.

“First three kisses,” Ben said.

“Oh _wow_ , you guys really didn’t hold back.” He could hear Klaus’s grin in his voice, and his hand ruffled lightly through Ben’s hair. “You’re adorable.”

Ben burrowed his face into the pillow with a squeak of embarrassment. That just made Klaus laugh again, stifling chuckles into the dark as Ben’s face burned.

After the silence had settled for a moment, Klaus gave a tiny huff of breath.

“I’m jealous.”

Ben turned his face away from the pillow towards Klaus. There was no sadness or bitterness in his voice; if anything, it sounded like he was smiling. Ben brought a hand to Klaus’s face to confirm. Yes, that was a little smile.

“Of who?” Ben asked. “Me, or Diego?”

Klaus shrugged, and now the smile was skewed slightly in restraint. “Both.”

Ben didn’t have an answer for that. The corner of Klaus’s mouth twitched under his fingertips.

“You, because you got to kiss Diego,” Klaus continued, “and Diego, because he got to kiss you.”

“Oh,” Ben whispered, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say and because it felt like this conversation should have at least a little bit of input on both sides.

Klaus’s hand slid up to cover Ben’s, pressing it to his cheek so that Ben could feel the muscles in Klaus’s jaw move as he said, “Can I kiss you too?”

Gosh, that was a big question, and Ben wasn’t sure how to answer it. There had been a certain impulsivity about Diego this morning that almost would have suited Klaus better, and in a way that had been easier than figuring out whether he wanted it before it was happening; but Klaus had spent his whole life being wrong in everything he did, and Ben sensed he was trying to figure out how to do right by the people he cared about.

Still, it was a lot to answer all at once.

“What, you don’t mind that Diego was first?”

Klaus grinned, as if Ben were not stalling in the most obvious way.

“And second? And third?”

“Stop,” Ben groaned, and wrinkled his nose when Klaus tickled a fingertip under his chin.

“Bentacles,” he said, “I am _happy_ to be number four.”

“Oh,” Ben breathed. Klaus’s hand was sliding from underneath his chin to the back of his neck, and it was making it very hard to form a coherent sentence. “Yeah- yeah, I think that would be okay.”

It was the smallest tilt of Klaus’s head, but it shifted the entire world. All the air disappeared, then returned as static on Ben’s skin, and the weeks he’d spent growing accustomed to sharing a bed with Klaus unravelled all at once; every inch of touch was significant, from the hand creeping up into Ben’s hair to the foot hooked around his ankle. Ben closed his eyes and let himself sink into the way his heart thrilled closer, even as his brain ticked through a list of _how do I avoid breathing all over his face?_ and _I hope he doesn’t mind that I’m not very good at this_ and _what am I supposed to do with my tongue???_ Klaus tasted like spearmint and bedtime cocoa.

“Wow,” Ben breathed, when Klaus pulled back for air. A gentle thumb stroked down the side of his face to rest on the thundering pulse just under his jaw.

“Good?”

“Yeah, I-” Ben turned his face towards the pillow to clear his throat. “I’m sorry, I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

“I know.” Klaus dotted a kiss to the very tip of Ben’s nose. “I don’t mind. I _very much_ know what I’m doing.”

There was an implication in there, and Ben felt his face flush hot. Klaus’s kisses moved softly across his flaming cheek as he pulled Ben into a tighter hug.

“Um. I’m. I-”

“Switch off the academic brain, Bentacles. Just kiss me.”

Through the darkness the carved wooden octopus watched from the bedside table, and Octi dangled over the side of the bed from the tentacle sandwiched between their stomachs as Ben lost count of kisses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT TOOK 31,809 WORDS FOR THEM TO KISS
> 
> I THINK THIS IS WHAT YOU MIGHT CALL SLOW BURN
> 
> In other news, I just found out that the reason I've had intermittent nauseating pain in my shoulder for the last ~7 years is because my top three right-hand ribs are misaligned in a bad way, to the point that my physio would have sworn I'd dislocated my shoulder at some point. It's now at the level that I can barely carry a backpack, and I'm going to get a bunch of scans done to see exactly what's wrong and how it can be fixed. While this doesn't prevent me writing per se, it does mean that other things like working (i.e. picking up small children all day) and doing housework are painful and tiring enough that writing gets bumped off the list. The next chapter might be a while coming. I'm so sorry. Please believe me that I'm working on it, I just have to look after my own health and let everything else fall where it can.
> 
> If you want to keep up with what's going on in my life, follow me on Twitter @jangjaeyul. There's a lot of Umbrellaposting, plus a whole bunch of K-pop.


	9. Chapter 9

Ben spent the whole of the next morning wanting to pull Diego aside and tell him, but it was impossible to find a minute. The only time they had alone together was when Klaus skipped History, but underneath Hargreeves’s disapproving glare and right behind Five’s back was hardly the best moment for that sort of revelation. Ben was about ninety-eight percent sure that Diego wouldn’t mind that he’d kissed Klaus, but he still wanted to tell him privately in case he had any strong feelings about it.

“I’m gonna d- drop my books upstairs,” Diego said as they left Hargreeves’s classroom for lunch. “You want me to take yours too while you grab us seats?”

“I’ll come with you,” Ben said. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Oh?” Diego looked at him curiously. “What’s up?”

Ben just jerked his head towards the stairs. “I’ll tell you up there.”

They headed up the four flights to the attic in companionable silence, and Ben followed Diego into his room to deposit their books.

“So what’s going on?”

Ben squared his shoulders and coughed into his elbow to buy himself a moment of thought. He hadn’t planned this conversation beyond _I kissed Klaus_ , and he now wasn’t sure what tone to set it to. It suddenly seemed presumptuous to be cheerful from the get-go.

As he was mustering the most neutral pitch he could manage, the door opened.

“There you are!” Klaus looked like he’d just sprinted up the stairs, wildly out of breath with a plastic shopping bag still swinging from one hand. “Diego, can I grab you for a sec?”

“I-” Diego looked perplexed. “I was just talking to B-”

“Just for a minute.” Klaus leaned in and hooked a finger around Diego’s wrist. “And then we can all go down for lunch.”

Diego threw a confused look over his shoulder at Ben as Klaus dragged him out of the room. The door of room 4 slammed, and Ben sat down at Diego’s desk with a sigh.

“What’s going on, Klaus?”

Ben grimaced at the mannequin on the desk. He didn’t particularly like eavesdropping, but it wasn’t like he could help it through the paper-thin walls. He knew that if this were a truly private conversation Klaus would have taken Diego to room 8 or onto the roof, so he didn’t try too hard not to hear them.

“So uh. Happy birthday again for yesterday. I thought I should get you something, so uh, here.”

A pause. Then Diego spoke.

“Is this a fucking prank?”

Ben winced.

“No, it’s a fucking present?”

_Klaus, you fool,_ Ben thought. _I told you not to spend too much money._

“What are you doing, Klaus?” Now Diego sounded genuinely angry. “Are you trying to flex on me with all that new cash? Like throwing your m- money around makes you better than me?”

“What? No! I’m trying to do something nice with it, _asshole,_ you needed a new phone, it wasn’t about the money - _God,_ you’re more important than money anyway!”

There was a thud, like a hand hitting the desk, and then silence. A second later, another thud - this one more akin to shoulders against a creaky wooden door. More silence, and then:

“D- d- d-”

“Deep breath.”

“D- don’t surprise me like that, I almost stabbed you.”

“Well drop the knife, cause I’m about to do it again.”

Another interlude of silence.

“We should- B- Ben’s probably wondering-”

“Ben’s probably listening through the wall, the dirty little perv.”

Ben gave a little squeak of mortification and picked up the mannequin, suddenly fascinated by its cheekbones. It was quiet next door for a long minute.

“Let’s go down and have lunch,” Klaus said, after a bit.

“You go down, I’ll follow you - Ben wanted to talk to me.”

“Hmm.”

“Oh, shut up.”

A laugh, muffled. The door creaked open, and Ben busied himself with the mannequin as he tried to push the flush down out of his face.

Diego appeared in the doorway looking flustered and rather pleased. “Hey.” He pushed the door closed behind him as Klaus clattered away down the stairs. “Sorry about that. Um. What did you want to tell me?”

Ben looked up at Diego’s bemused smile, the Samsung box clutched between his hands, the breathless glow across his cheeks. For a second they just looked at each other. Ben felt the start of his own grin, saw Diego’s grow to match it, and then he was up out of the desk chair and bounding across the room.

“ _Hee!_ ”

Diego kissed him soundly, and when he dropped the phone in its box onto the bed and tugged Ben closer it was an easy hop for Ben to jump into Diego’s arms and wrap his legs around his waist.

“Well,” Ben whispered into Diego’s bottom lip, “this has all worked out beautifully.”

“I’m guessing you and he-”

“Made out until two in the morning.”

“Of course you did.” Diego’s grin was almost too wide to kiss. “I knew I trusted you to bring all the pieces together.”

“I gotta say, I didn’t think you two were actually gonna rage-kiss.”

Diego rolled his eyes as he set Ben back on his feet and pressed another kiss to his lips. “You know he only ever uses his words with you.”

“Yeah, and you’re no different.”

“Ouch. Point t- taken.”

Ben laughed and cupped his hands behind Diego’s head to hold him close a second longer. “Try _talking_ to him,” he whispered. “He’s not going to belittle you for having human feelings.”

“There you go again with the m- mind reading.” Diego took one hand from his neck and kissed its scarred palm. “C’mon, let’s go have lunch.”

-

Ben scowled at the lock. How did Klaus make this look so easy? He’d been working at it so long that the outline of a bobby pin was imprinted in each thumb, and the tumblers still wouldn’t budge. Every so often he tested the door to see whether he’d gotten it by accident, but all he got was a squeak from the handle; it was firmly locked.

He’d be lying if he said his frustration was entirely for the sake of the lock itself. Klaus had decided that they couldn’t set up a bed in room 8 until all three of them could confidently lock and unlock its door, and now that sharing a bed also meant sharing a whole lot of kissing Ben was more than a little impatient to prove to Klaus that he could make the pins work in his favour. It just wasn’t happening, though - if the stiff lock wasn’t bad enough, his right hand was also taking any opportunity to crash the party with spikes of discomfort at every particularly fiddly movement. More than once he’d dropped the bobby pins on the ground, lost all progress, and had to start over. Ben was beginning to get a little bit annoyed.

So engrossed was he in the minute click of pins inside the lock that he didn’t hear the door creak open behind him.

“Ben?”

He just about jumped out of his skin. “Jesus!” Clutching his heart, he scrambled around to set his back to the guilty door. “Vanya. Oh my god.”

“Sorry,” she winced. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s okay, I was just- ah-”

“You guys hang out in there a lot, huh?” She nodded towards the rusty number 8 on the door.

“I, uh. Yeah,” Ben admitted. “But, um. I can’t get the door open. There’s no key, so.”

“Oh.”

“Klaus taught me how to pick the lock,” Ben said, wondering even as he opened his mouth why he was disclosing all this to Vanya. “But I can’t make it work, my hand doesn’t like all the little twists and stuff.”

“Is it-” Vanya broke off as a key grated in the lock of the next room.

_Ah, shit._ Ben jumped up from the floor and, in a moment of panic, kicked the card of bobby pins under the locked door. Vanya reached out and grabbed his hand to drag him into her room just as door 5 opened.

There was a moment of silence, then the tap of perfectly-shined shoes before Five appeared in the doorway.

“Vanya,” he said by way of greeting, eyeing the two of them standing in front of Vanya’s desk hand-in-hand. “Benjamin.”

“It’s-” Ben stumbled, but it was too late to say nothing when he’d already snapped on the first word. “It’s not Benjamin,” he said, more calmly. “It’s just Ben.”

Five raised an eyebrow.

“I can show you my passport if you want.” God, that was far too snarky. Klaus was rubbing off on him.

“That’s not necessary.” He said it like it was a kindness. “I’ll see you later, Vanya.”

“See you.” She gave a little wave with the hand not holding Ben’s.

As Five’s shoes clicked away down the stairs, Ben eyed Vanya. “Are you two friends?”

She shrugged. “I guess? He’s kind of nice.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Ben mumbled. “He’s had it in for Klaus since day one.”

She hummed thoughtfully. “They’re very opposite personalities.”

“You’re not wrong.”

Vanya seemed to suddenly realise that she was still holding Ben’s left hand like a Scout’s shake. Releasing him, she turned and began shuffling pages around on her music stand.

“Thanks for the save there,” Ben said. “I feel like on the scale of people you wouldn’t want to catch you breaking into a vacant room, he’s near the top.”

Vanya laughed. “That would be awkward to explain.” She slid a sheet out from behind the rest and scrutinised it for a second. “You’re having trouble picking the lock, though?”

“Yeah,” Ben sighed. “It’s my stupid hand.”

She glanced down at his wrist. “What’s up with it?”

In answer, Ben held up his right hand to show her the scar trailing across his palm.

“Oh, _ow_.”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “I’m still getting used to it. Hopefully I get full use back? Otherwise I might have to become ambidextrous.”

She gave him a sympathetic wince. “Is it recent? What happened?”

“Uh.” Ben grimaced. “I kind of. Cut myself? By accident? On Diego’s knife?”

Her eyes went wide, the music perfectly still between her fingers. “It was an accident though, right?”

“Oh yeah, yeah.” Ben waved her concern away. “I grabbed the blade. It wasn’t his fault.”

“Okay, good.” She returned to the music stand and resumed setting the sheets in order. 

Ben sensed she had more to say; rather than pushing for it, he wandered over to the desk to observe her violin sitting in its open case.

“He scares me,” she admitted after a minute.

“Diego?”

“Yeah.”

Ben nodded. “How come?”

“The knives, mostly.” She leaned past him to pick up the violin and tweaked one of the fine tuning pegs. “He seems kind of angry.”

“Mm.” Ben considered that. “He can be intimidating, I guess.” He picked up Vanya’s bow and held it out to her as she finished tuning. “But he’s a sweetheart. He’s like a hedgehog.”

She grinned, chin tucked in to hold the violin on her shoulder. “Prickly on the top, fluffy underneath?”

Ben laughed. “Yeah! Very spiky, until you can convince him to relax. Nice tummy.”

Vanya raised one amused eyebrow but didn’t comment, and Ben felt the flush rise through his face.

-

There was a crumble of chimney-brick to his left, and a tuft of curls appeared over the edge of the shingles. Ben gave a nod of greeting and waited until Klaus was seated on the roof next to the liongoyle before speaking, eyes still on the phone in his hands.

“Did you finish your homework?”

“Sure.” Klaus pulled a crumpled wad of cardboard from his pocket and extracted a cigarette.

“So no.”

“Eh.” Klaus shrugged. “More important shit to do.”

Ben rolled his eyes and swiped into the Settings tab. “Like smoke?”

“Like talk to you.”

That was unexpectedly flustering. Ben squeezed his knees around the liongoyle’s flanks and ducked his head so Klaus couldn’t get so easy a look at his face.

“What are you doing?”

Ben wiggled the phone in Klaus’s direction. “Getting Diego set up with a bunch of apps and some decent music on the family Spotify account.”

“Oh, nice. How much data have you burnt?”

“None,” Ben said. “The neighbours don’t have a password on their Wi-Fi.”

“Ben!” When he glanced back, Klaus’s eyebrows seemed to have aspirations of becoming hair. “Stealing other people’s internet? That’s a whole _crime!_ How unlike you.”

“Yeah, they named their network _Waifu360NoScope_ so they definitely have unlimited internet and also are definitely an asshole. I feel zero amount of bad about this.”

Klaus sniffed dramatically. “I’m so proud of you.”

“I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing,” Ben muttered.

Klaus just laughed, and a moment later there was a scuffle of shingles as he scooted over to sit directly behind Ben, his gangly legs astride the liongoyle on the outside of Ben’s. His chin hooked over Ben’s shoulder, observing as he scrolled through Spotify downloading playlists.

“Get him some My Chemical Romance,” Klaus said. “I bet he was a massive emo back in the day. Do you think he cried when they broke up? He probably cried when they broke up.”

“Klaus, he would have been like eleven.”

“You’re right. He definitely cried.”

“He- oh my god.” Ben pressed his wrist to his mouth to stifle a helpless giggle. “You’re a complete fool.”

“So I’ve heard.” Klaus’s arms slid around his waist, and his grin was sharp against the side of Ben’s neck. “I wasn’t kidding, by the way. Get him some My Chemical Romance.”

“Okay, okay!” Ben tapped the download button and scrolled past before Klaus could insist on Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco too. “Weren’t you gonna smoke or something?”

“I did!” Klaus wriggled a kiss in behind Ben’s ear. “I only needed like half a cigarette.”

Sure enough, when Ben turned his face to catch the next kiss Klaus tasted like fresh nicotine. Ben wrinkled his nose, and Klaus leaned back with another wriggle of hands in pockets. A rattle of plastic later, he returned for another kiss, this one mintier.

“Thank you,” Ben murmured.

Klaus brought a hand to Ben’s chin to keep him from turning back to the phone, and Ben gave a surprised squeak into his mouth as Klaus’s tongue pushed a mint past his lips.

“Klaus!” Ben pushed him off and brought a hand to his mouth as his cheeks flushed so hot he thought he might pass out.

“Was that gross?”

“ _Yes!_ ”

Klaus grinned, a glimpse of his own mint showing through his teeth. “Did you hate it?”

Ben felt the flush spread to his ears and took it out on the mint between his molars. “... _No._ ”

Klaus just smirked and bit his mint cleanly in half. Ben turned back and resumed tapping at Diego’s phone with a grumble, which only made Klaus laugh.

There was a stark contrast, Ben thought, between kissing Diego and kissing Klaus, and it was only as Klaus hugged in close against his back that he realised why. Ben and Diego had never been particularly close, physically speaking. They’d shared a bed, but not spooned; hugged goodnight, but not snuggled. Kissing and cuddling was just another addition to the relationship they had. Klaus, on the other hand, had taken an existing component of their friendship and changed it. Wrapping his arms around Ben’s waist had a new meaning now. Being nose-to-nose in the middle of the night was no longer a neutral state. He’d overwritten things that had been very comfortable and charged them with something electric that Ben didn’t quite understand.

Diego was grounding; Klaus was a perpetual livewire.

He was also very distracting, lipping his way along the back of Ben’s neck with his hands tucked into the softest part of his waist.

“Klaus,” Ben muttered, half amused and half exasperated.

“What?”

“I’m trying to set up Diego’s phone.”

Klaus’s little finger curled up under the hem of his shirt. “I’m not stopping you.”

That delicate fingertip traced back and forth across Ben’s hipbone just at the top of his pants. Klaus knew exactly what he was doing, and he probably thought he was being sly hiding his grin in the nape of Ben’s neck. Ben rolled his eyes and clenched his stomach to try and resist a bit of the ticklishness. His shiver was only half from the cold wind blowing across the skin between knee socks and uniform shorts.

“It’s twenty minutes to lights out,” Klaus pointed out.

“Mhm.” Ben ignored the edge of teeth against his ear. “Which means I’ve got twenty minutes to finish sorting out this phone.”

“Ooor, it means we can go inside and get a twenty-minute headstart on going to bed.”

“Since when do you ever want to go to bed early?”

“Since I’m taking you with me.”

_Oh, hell._ Ben closed his eyes and tried his hardest to suppress the full-body wash of goosebumps at those words in that tone from that smirking mouth against his ear.

“Oh, are you now?” Ben was proud of how steady his voice was.

Klaus nodded, nose tracing up and down behind Ben’s ear.

“Bad news,” Ben said, “I’m in with Diego tonight.”

“Oh really?” Klaus sounded surprised, but not overly disappointed. “What about the immense personal bubble of his aching tit?”

Ben rolled his eyes and elbowed Klaus gently in the ribs. “Not everyone is a fucking octopus in their sleep like you are, Klaus.”

“You like octopus…es. Octopi?”

“Octopodes,” Ben supplied. “If you want to get technical about it.”

“You know so many words.”

“In fifth grade I read the dictionary for fun.”

Klaus snorted into Ben’s hair. “Really?”

“Yep. And that’s how I learned the C word.”

Klaus’s laugh was just a breathless wheeze, and he cupped a hand under Ben’s chin to turn his face and kiss him until they were both flushed and warm under the cool night sky.

-

Five minutes before lights out, Ben tapped on the open door of room 2.

Diego looked up from the shirt he was folding. “Oh, hey.”

“Hey.” Ben stepped inside and pushed the door not quite closed behind him, holding up Diego’s phone. “I finished setting it up.”

“Awesome. Thanks, man.” Diego took the phone and set it on the bedside table, then turned back to Ben. “You going to b- bed now?”

“Um.” He hunched his shoulders and leaned back against the door until it clicked shut. “Yeah.”

Ben was getting better at picking out Diego’s tiny smiles, the ones where he thought maybe he didn’t have a right to be as pleased as he was.

“C- cool.”

Two minutes later, when Diego reached over and turned the bedside lamp off, the darkness seemed a lot thinner than it ever had before. He’d left Octi in Klaus’s room by mistake, Ben realised, and without her there wasn’t a lot to hold that careful six inches of space they normally kept between them. If Ben bent his knee, he’d meet Diego’s thigh. It definitely wasn’t unpleasant, just very weird.

Diego seemed to notice it too. After a few minutes of silence, he slid one hand out from under the pillow and reached across the tiny chasm between them to touch Ben’s face.

“Hey,” Ben whispered.

For a second, Diego didn’t answer. Then, with a shuffle of shoulders, he wriggled closer and pulled Ben into a kiss.

“Hi,” he murmured, and curled both hands around the back of Ben’s neck. “This okay?”

“Mhm.” Ben nodded and inched closer until his knees slotted in between Diego’s.

It was nice, a pleasant kind of thrill, to push the boundaries they’d fallen into. They’d never been inclined to sleep wrapped around each other before, but it felt right when Diego’s hand tucked into the small of Ben’s back and pulled him in that last little bit. Ben’s hands on Diego’s chest felt safe, comfortable and secure. He suddenly couldn’t remember which nipple was pierced, though, and tried very hard not to stray too near either one.

They reached a point where gentle, soft kisses turned into something slightly different. Ben’s heart tripped inside his chest, and when he gasped into Diego’s mouth Diego pushed back harder, rolling forward so that Ben ended up on his back with Diego almost on top of him. Then Diego’s hips met the outside of Ben’s thigh, and he jerked away like a static shock.

“Sorry,” he muttered, and his weight began to shift decidedly too far backwards for Ben’s liking.

“No-” he shot out a hand to grab Diego’s shoulder. “It’s okay. I like this.”

Diego’s face was difficult to read at the best-lit of times and Ben found himself wishing, in a slightly unsettling way, that he had brought a knife to bed. Without a revolving blade to gauge, he had to wait until Diego relaxed and shuffled closer again, this time with his hips firmly on the bed rather than Ben’s leg.

“Not used to this,” Diego admitted, brushing the hair off Ben’s face and ducking to kiss his cheek.

Ben couldn’t help grinning. “Me neither.”

“Pfft.” Diego paused to kiss along the line of Ben’s jaw in a way that lit up involuntary sparks along his spine. “What about Klaus? Thought you’d been m- m- making out till all hours.”

“I mean. Yeah.” Ben shrugged, fighting a blush. _It doesn’t make me any less of an awkward virgin, though._

Diego hummed and traced his nose up behind Ben’s ear. “I can’t wait until we can sleep in room 8 all together.”

“I still have to learn to pick the lock,” Ben sighed. Diego’s lips against the shell of his ear were making him all sorts of shivery.

“Mm. How’s that coming along?”

“Shit,” Ben muttered, and then again, “ _shit,_ ” as Diego began sucking on the soft skin just behind the bolt of his jaw.

Diego didn’t answer beyond another hum, but Ben didn’t really need him to. He combed his fingers into Diego’s short hair and closed his eyes and revelled in the newness of this shiver of possibility between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben: I didn't think you two were going to rage kiss  
> Me: how the fuck else were they gonna get together u silly octopus man
> 
> So my shoulder is still doing its thing. I got some x-rays done and nothing is fractured, which is nice to know. My physiotherapist thinks it's a tendon issue, so next on the list is an ultrasound, and hopefully then we'll know how to make it better? My life is a never-ending string of joint issues at the moment lmao. Thank you so much for your patience while I sort out that shit and try to crank out new chapters at the same time.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a content warning for descriptions of past gang violence and murder.

“907.57?”

Ben lifted his face from the muffin on the table in front of him, which he was so far having great success of eating even with both hands occupied on his homework. Klaus’s hair was dangling at least three bobby pins, pulled out of his curls by the rake of frustrated fingers, and he’d just about stabbed a hole through the page with his pen.

“Hm?” Ben tried to scan Klaus’s notebook for the relevant information, but his handwriting was difficult to read even right side up.

“907.57, is that right?”

“You gotta give me some context, Klaus.”

Klaus swivelled the book around and pushed it towards Ben, who ran an eye down the column of working.

“Mmm.” He squinted at the page. Something was missing. “Looks too big for that radius. Did you divide by 2?”

“Uhhh…” Klaus pulled the book back towards himself and frowned at the page for a moment, then grabbed his calculator.

“453.79.”

“That sounds better.”

“Yay!” Klaus turned the page of his textbook and leaned across the table to sneak a kiss onto Ben’s purple-stained lips. “Mmm. Can I have a bite?”

“Pretty sure if you go see Diego he’ll give you a whole one of your own,” Ben said, but he pushed the muffin towards Klaus anyway.

“Diego has muffins?”

“Diego likes to help Grace in the kitchen in exchange for an advance on lunch.”

“ _We’re having muffins for lunch?_ ”

Ben shrugged, a smile twitching into his cheeks. “Depends whether you finish those problems in time to beat the crowd.”

Klaus made a high-pitched screeching sound in the back of his throat and virtually slammed his face into his notebook, pen flying across the page. Ben grinned and picked a stray blueberry off the edge of the muffin while he contemplated the next sector.

At lunch they found Diego hunched over at the corner table, his history textbook in one hand and a bread roll in the other that seemed to have been forgotten after one bite.

“Have you taken a break from studying at all today?” Ben asked, sliding into the seat beside him and nudging the bread roll towards Diego’s mouth.

Diego just grunted, taking a distracted bite and going right back to his textbook. “Bathroom break. At t- ten thirty.”

“Diego, it’s quarter to one.”

“Mm.”

“Diego. _Put the book down._ ”

“He’s using his Serious Ben voice, Dee,” Klaus said. “I’d obey him if I were you.”

“Hm?” It seemed to take a monumental effort for Diego to tear his eyes away when his finger reached the end of the paragraph. “What?”

Ben took advantage of his dazed moment to slide the textbook away from him and snap it shut.

“Hey!” Diego protested. Ben took his hand and directed it towards his open mouth, slotting the bread neatly between Diego’s teeth and holding it there until he took a bite.

“You were on page 204,” he said. “You can come back to it later.”

Diego gave a frustrated grunt. “I want to finish the chapter today so w- we can go out tomorrow.”

“You’ve got plenty of time,” Ben pointed out, picking up his own spoon and stirring his soup. “You’re only two pages from the end.”

“Yeah, but it’ll take me t- t- two hours to read each page.”

“What? No way,” Klaus scoffed. He took a giant bite out of his muffin, not bothering to chew or swallow before saying, “You actually pay attention when you read, there’s no way it takes you that long.”

Diego glared at him until he shut his mouth to chew. “It’s not like I can go any faster when I have to read each sentence three times to make the words stay still.”

Ben glanced up from buttering his bread roll, frowning. “What do you mean?”

Diego cast a hand towards the textbook where it sat on the table in front of Ben’s lunch tray. “The words keep blurring and falling out of my head. How am I supposed to read any faster when they don’t stay put long enough to get them all at once?”

“I-” Ben, concerned now, put down his bread and turned to get a better look at Diego. “Do you need glasses or something?”

“I dunno,” Diego shrugged. “I’ve never checked.”

Ben glanced at Klaus and caught a reflection of his own apprehension.

“Let’s go to the- the-” Klaus floundered for a moment, “the glasses store.”

“Optometrist, is the word you’re looking for.”

“That’s the one.”

Diego looked uncertain. “I dunno if I really n- need to.”

“I think you do,” Ben said.

“Well w- what does it cost?”

Ben hesitated, picking his words carefully. “Not a lot.” With one heel, he nudged Klaus’s ankle under the table.

“Yeah, I’ll pay for it,” Klaus put in, which was the opposite of what Ben had meant him to do.

“No, _Klaus-_ ”

“Diego,” Ben interrupted him. “If getting you glasses will help you read faster and give you more time to hang out with me and Klaus, I’d consider that worth paying for.”

Diego grumped, but he did shut his mouth. After a moment of fuming, he sighed. “Fine. But if the bill’s too much you’re not allowed to pay for it.”

“Okay,” Klaus agreed, so quickly that Ben knew he’d be hiding the bill from Diego no matter how large it was.

Having made peace with that, Diego seemed to realise that lunch had materialised in front of him from Ben’s tray. He slid the soup towards himself and dipped his half-eaten bread roll in it, and the first bite seemed to trip some internal wire that had him snarfing down the whole bowl before it could even cool. Ben pushed the remainder of his own soup towards Diego and snagged a muffin from the small mountain on Klaus’s plate. Klaus wrinkled his nose, but said nothing.

It made more sense now, the way Diego paid attention in class. He took notes, but they were cramped and illegible to Ben’s eye, and he spent most of history that afternoon with his head up listening to Hargreeves lecture. Only the restless knife spinning under the table indicated anything less than undivided attention.

“Can you even see the board?” Ben whispered.

Diego nodded. “Board’s fine,” he muttered. “I mean. I s- still have to read it three times. But I can read it.”

That was something, at least. Diego seemed almost fixated on the board in a furious kind of concentration, and now Ben understood why he always seemed to examine it as if looking for some deeper, hidden meaning. No - he was just trying to make sense of the words, the frustrated spin of his blade intensifying each time Hargreeves wrote something new.

After dinner, when they were all sitting on Klaus’s bed, Ben nudged Diego with his foot. The breeze blowing in through the window ruffled the delicate pages of Klaus’s artwork against the wall, and Ben shivered in his sweater, but at least it cleared the smell of the whiskey that Klaus and Diego were passing back and forth between them.

“Hey, Diego.”

“Mm.” Diego swallowed, coughed, and passed the bottle back to Klaus. “What’s up?”

“Would it help if I read the textbook to you?” When Diego frowned, he clarified. “If reading is the problem, then maybe me reading it out loud would help. I wouldn’t mind.”

Diego considered this over another sip of whiskey. “I mean. M- maybe? I dunno. You’ve got such a soft voice, Benny…”

“Or Klaus,” Ben added. “He probably needs it just as much as you do.”

“ _Hey-_ ”

“You do,” Diego agreed. “I’d be d- doing you a favour.”

“You’re both assholes,” Klaus scowled.

“We’re trying to save your grades,” Ben said. “You’re never going to get into college if you don’t actually _try_ to pass.”

“Who says I want to go to college? I’m too rich to be an academic.”

Diego leaned forward and took the bottle out of Klaus’s hands, then smacked him on the back of the head.

“Ow!” Klaus threw his arm up to block any further blows, but Diego was content to drain the rest of the whiskey down his throat and shove the empty bottle back at Klaus.

“Go to college or don’t go to college, but don’t use your m- money as an excuse. Either you want an education or you d- d- don’t.”

Klaus peered into the bottle and upended it over his mouth for any lingering drops. “It’s not that I don’t want to learn stuff,” he said, “I’m just not convinced that college has anything for me. What am I gonna do? Go to lectures and bore myself to tears, write a whole bunch of essays and do a lot of exams and prove that I’m _smart,_ that I’m _capable,_ that I’m a good little boy who’s qualified to do something big and important that I - this is the crucial part - _don’t actually want to do._ ”

Ben considered this with a tilt of his head. There was a moment of silence while Klaus leaned over and stashed the bottle back under the bed with a clank of glass and cans, then came up holding an identical, albeit unopened, bottle.

“What _do_ you want to do?” Diego asked.

Klaus shrugged. “Fuck if I know. I never really expected to make it this far, to be honest. What do people do if they’re not doctors or lawyers or that kinda shit?”

And that was a great question. Ben knew about business, he’d always known about business, and he knew the kinds of people that business people interacted with - executives, and accountants, and engineers and architects and bankers and politicians - but what if none of those things appealed? What did one do then?

“You know you don’t have to go to an Ivy League school, right?” Diego took the bottle as Klaus handed it to him, took a sip, and wrinkled his nose. “This one’s been sitting against the chimney, Klaus, it’s warm. You know there’s other alternatives for college, right?”

“Like what?” Klaus didn’t seem to mind the warm whiskey, taking a huge gulp and setting the bottle down on the bedside table. “Not that Harvard has ever been on my shortlist, mind you.”

“Well, community college, for a start.”

“Oh hey, yeah.” Ben leaned forward. “You could totally go to a community college. They’ve got all sorts of stuff there, I’m kinda jealous.”

“What do you mean, jealous?” Diego raised an eyebrow.

“Just like… there’s a whole bunch of stuff that universities don’t offer, but community colleges do. I don’t even know what, exactly. It just seems more fun.”

“Then why don’t you go to community college?” Klaus asked.

Ben couldn’t help a snort. “You think my parents would be happy with that? They want me to go to Wharton.”

“What, you don’t have a choice?” Diego, seeming to reconsider his stance on warm whiskey, leaned over Klaus and snagged the bottle off the table. “They won’t let you go to a college they haven’t picked for you?”

“No, no-” Ben shook his head. “It’s not like that. They won’t forbid me or disown me or anything, it’ll just be a huge _thing_ and I’ll have to explain my entire life plan to them like a business proposal so they know I’ve thought it all out. It’s easier just to take the path they’ve already thought out for me.”

“Well, it’s great to know you’re starting the rest of your life with such m- motivation and initiative,” Diego said. “Nothing says ‘entrepreneur’ like letting someone else make all your decisions for you.”

The flush through Ben’s face was instantaneous and embarrassing. “ _Hey, that’s-_ that’s… Damn. That’s a really good point.”

“ _Hah,_ ” Klaus gurgled, whiskey bubbling out the corner of his mouth, “ _fuckin’ burn._ ”

“Shut up.” Diego’s hand against Klaus’s chest was the lightest tap, but it was still enough to make Klaus choke and double over to splutter against the bedspread. Ben smacked him solidly between the shoulder blades until he sat up and cleared his throat, wiping the whiskey off his chin.

“So what do you want to do, if business doesn’t do it for you?” Klaus asked.

Ben considered this for a long minute, during which the whiskey passed back and forth several times. “Honestly? I have no idea. I guess I’ve always figured business would do, you know? It makes decent money. I could live comfortably.”

“Comfortably and happily aren’t the same thing,” Diego pointed out.

And that was a distinction that Ben had never really thought to make.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

On the kind of impulse that could only come from having your entire life plan dismantled in the space of five minutes, he reached out and intercepted the bottle as it passed back to Klaus, brought it to his lips, and took a swig.

“ _Oh-_ ” Ben choked on the immediate sensation of tepid wood smoke up his nose. “ _Oh God, that’s vile._ ”

“It’s better cold,” Klaus assured him. “I promise you, this is the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to degenerate high school drinking.”

“Yeah,” Diego agreed with a snort, taking the bottle back from Ben and raising it in a toast. “Welcome to the club, Bentacles.”

-

“Well. I guess that’s one thing s- sorted out.”

Ben shaded his eyes against the afternoon sun and squinted up at Diego. “Everything makes a lot more sense now, huh?”

“Mm.” Diego cocked his head to one side and began walking in the direction of the mall, one arm linked through Ben’s elbow and the other tugging at the front of Klaus’s coat to drag him along. “I mean, not quite everything.”

“What do you mean?” Klaus said. As Diego let go of his coat he reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out his squashed cigarette packet. “I thought she said it was simple to correct?”

“ _Klaus,_ ” Ben hissed, reaching out to snatch the cigarettes and shove them into the pocket of Klaus’s coat. When Klaus gave him an indignant look, Ben tugged on his scarf and flapped the end into Klaus’s face so the Academy emblem hit him in the nose. “Don’t tempt fate in partial uniform.”

“She said,” Diego cut in as Klaus rolled his eyes and began shoving the scarf down inside his coat, “that the fuzziness will p- p- p- definitely go away with glasses, but being farsighted doesn’t usually cause words to jump around or d- disappear once you read them.”

Ben thought about that for a minute. “Could it just be the fact that you’re having to work so hard to read the words that you don’t have enough brain to remember them?”

“Then why do the words on the b- b- on the board not stick either?” Diego sighed and shook his shoulders as if he could dispel the frustration that way. Ben saw his thumb twitching towards his belt, and stepped closer to slide his hand into Diego’s to give him something a little more publicly appropriate than a knife to fidget with.

“Did she have a theory for that?” Klaus asked, retrieving his cigarettes again now that all the Umbrella branding was hidden inside his coat.

Diego shook his head. “Said it w- wasn’t her place to speculate. I’m supposed to w- wear the glasses for a week or two and go to a doctor if it’s not better.”

Ben conceded the sense of that plan with a nod and a gentle scratch of one nail against Diego’s palm. Diego tickled his wrist in response, and when Ben giggled and squirmed away Diego tugged his whole arm over his own shoulder and hauled Ben up onto his back.

“Oh my god - Diego!” Ben couldn’t contain a shriek of laughter, wrapping both arms tightly around Diego’s neck and holding on for dear life as Diego leaped across the plaza towards the mall.

“Wait for me!” Klaus yelled, cigarette lighter still in his hand as he galloped after them leaving a small plume of smoke in his wake.

“Diego?”

It took a second for Ben to register - that voice belonged to none of the three of them. Diego himself seemed to realise this at the same time, turning around and releasing his hold on Ben’s legs to let him slide off his back and onto the ground. Standing still amidst the flow of pedestrian traffic coming out of the mall was a young man, taller than Klaus and broader than Diego, with a round face and curly brown hair.

“Diego,” he repeated, just loud enough to be heard, as if in disbelief.

“Hazel,” Diego whispered.

Before Ben could work out who this man was to Diego, Hazel had closed the space between them and Diego was flinging his arms around him, dragging him close and clutching at his back as Hazel enfolded him in a giant hug. For a long moment they just clung to each other, still and silent, Diego’s face pressed into Hazel’s shoulder and Hazel’s cheek tilted against the side of Diego’s head, eyes closed and smile wide. Then Klaus caught up to them with a wheeze of lost breath, and Hazel opened his eyes, arms loosening around Diego’s shoulders.

“Oh,” he said, “sorry-”

“Oh yeah,” Diego cleared his throat and held out a hand towards the two of them. “This is, uh, m- my… Klaus and Ben.”

“Hey, Klaus and Ben.” Hazel gave a little wave. “I’m Hazel.”

“Nice to meet you,” Ben murmured, and Klaus nodded in agreement.

Hazel turned back to Diego, smile growing again as he looked him over. “Diego, oh man. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. Especially not here.”

“Yeah,” Diego said. “W- w- what are you doing here, man?”

Hazel nodded towards the highrise hotel across the street. “I’m just in town for the weekend with my parents. I’m thinking of transferring here next fall. What about you?”

“I g- go to school here.” Diego glanced down at his shoes. “I’m at the Umbrella Academy.”

“Really?” Hazel’s eyebrows went up, and for a moment Ben bristled, but the smile that followed was soft, not mocking. “I’ve heard it’s a great school. I’m proud of you, Diego.”

“Thanks,” Diego murmured, and lifted his gaze again to grin at Hazel.

“So hey,” Hazel said, “sounds like you’ve been out of the orphanage for a while - have you heard from Cha-Cha or Patch recently?”

Before Hazel could even close his mouth, Diego’s face had fallen. Hazel was still smiling, eyes bright, and Diego was so suddenly, shockingly pale that Ben stepped forward to place a hand at his back in case he passed out on the spot.

“Diego?” Hazel prompted, when Diego didn’t speak.

“H-- uh- I-” Diego opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, then swallowed hard. “They d- d- d- - - you didn’t hear.”

“… Hear what?”

Diego closed his eyes and swallowed again. “Let’s sit down,” he whispered.

Klaus tapped Ben on the arm and indicated the concrete planter behind them, its bushes mostly bare save for one or two flowers still clinging in defiance of fall. They sat on the edge, Hazel beginning to look worried now that Diego was twisting his hands together in his lap.

“Diego, what’s going on?”

“I… d- d- d- - -” a strangled squeak seemed to be all he could manage.

“It’s okay,” Hazel said softly, one hand on Diego’s wrist. “Remember to picture the word in your mind.”

Diego took another deep breath and tried again, squaring up more towards Hazel and setting his back to Ben and Klaus. “Do you remember Cha-Cha joined a g- g- a gang, just before you got adopted?”

“Oh yeah,” Hazel nodded. “Yeah, I remember now. I told her it was a bad idea, but you know Cha-Cha. Was she okay?”

“N- no, she- Hazel, she- Eudora-”

As Diego’s shoulders tensed, Ben felt a sick flash of recognition sink into the pit of his stomach. Of course. Of _course._

He’d never thought to ask Diego what E.P. stood for.

“Eudora’s dead.”

All the air stopped between them, so still that Ben could feel the jolt of shock through Klaus’s arm at his back.

“What?” Hazel breathed.

Diego just shook his head.

“What happened?”

Silence.

“Diego, what- what _happened?_ ”

“Cha-Cha came b- back,” Diego whispered, and even without leaning forward to see his face Ben could hear the threat of tears in his voice. “She w- wanted Eudora in too. But Eudora said no.”

“She wanted her to join the gang?”

Diego nodded. “She told Eudora to m- meet her. Just to t- t- t- - - just to talk.”

Hazel closed his eyes and shook his head. “No. Please tell me she didn’t go alone.”

“I t- told her not to.” Diego’s voice was so thin, cracking on every breath. “I said I’d g- g- go with her. But Abhijat d- dragged me into his office after dinner, and by the time I escaped she’d already left w- without me.”

“Oh, God.” Hazel pressed a hand over his own mouth like he could keep the world from breaking that way.

Ben clenched his teeth, fighting the urge to lean forward and press himself against Diego’s back for some kind of mutual support. Behind him Klaus was shaking, and in the chasm of breath before Diego spoke again Klaus’s hand crept around Ben’s elbow and just held there, keeping them both in one piece.

“When I got there she was already d- d- d- - - dead.”

Diego’s voice shattered into a sob. Hazel dropped his hand from his mouth and Diego pitched forward into his arms, shoulders heaving.

“They just left her in the dirt,” Diego gasped, half muffled against Hazel’s arm, “b- behind the gas station. They’d- they- there wasn’t even any blood. Just so m- many bruises.”

Ben saw the full-body shock as Hazel understood what that meant. “Wh- who. Who- did Cha-Cha-?”

“Two,” Diego said. “Two m- m- two guys from the gang. She b- brought them to jump P- P- Eudora in.”

“But Patch said no,” Hazel said.

“So they tried to d- do it anyway.”

“ _Jesus Christ._ ”

Watching Hazel try to rock the shudder of Diego’s body to stillness, Ben thought about the cold, pared-down version of this story that Diego had told him on the fire escape. Self-preservation, he realised, that kind of emotional detachment to Ben as an uninvolved third party. But Diego could not detach this from Hazel.

“I’m so sorry, Diego. I’m sorry you- I’m sorry for the whole thing.”

“No, it-” Diego tried to wriggle away, but Hazel wasn’t letting go, “you don’t understand, I- I left her.”

“You told her not to go. There was nothing more you could do.”

“ _No,_ ” Diego insisted, “I _left her._ I d- didn’t wait for the police to show up, I ran away- I left her there, just like they did.”

Over Diego’s shoulder Ben watched Hazel’s expression contort through five kinds of pain and settle on anguish.

“I should have stayed with her,” Diego whimpered.

“Diego, it’s okay. It wasn’t your fault. You did the best you could.”

All the fight visibly drained out of Diego’s body, and he let Hazel pull him in tighter until he had to turn his face to breathe.

“I loved her,” he whispered, tears tracking in at the corner of his mouth and flickering out on each shaky breath.

“I know,” Hazel murmured. “I know, Diego.”

“She d- didn’t deserve to die like that.”

“No.” Hazel’s hand stroking over Diego’s hair was firm and calm even as a fresh trickle of tears made their way down to his scruffy beard. Ben wondered if this was what it was like having an older brother, someone whose strength you could trust when your own just wasn’t enough.

As Hazel and Diego lapsed into silence, Ben became aware that Klaus’s presence at his back had disappeared. Looking around, he located a tuft of curls and a plume of smoke just visible over the base of the statue in the middle of the plaza, and with a nod of apology at Hazel he got up to go investigate.

“Hey,” he said, sliding down against the cold marble to sit on the ground at Klaus’s side. “You okay?”

Klaus took a long, deep pull on his cigarette and slowly blew the smoke out in a thin stream before shaking his head. “I had no idea.”

Ben sighed and leaned sideways to rest against Klaus’s shoulder. “I knew she was murdered. I didn’t know he was the one that found her.”

“I didn’t even know she existed.”

“Mm. He carves her initials on things, sometimes.”

Klaus released another lungful of smoke, then stubbed the cigarette out on the marble. “I don’t know what I’m fucking doing, Ben. He’s been through so much shit, and he’s never told me about any of it, and now that he is I don’t have the first clue what to say to him. And you know what? I don’t blame him. I don’t pay attention - I never even noticed he was carving her name. I literally just ran away rather than watch him cry. I wouldn’t trust me either.” He threw the cigarette butt down on the ground and folded his arms against his chest, hunching protective shoulders around his ears. “And even you, Mr. Good Listener, only get hints of what’s going on in his mind. She was the love of his life. What the fuck are we next to that?”

Ben took a moment to think about that while he scooted forward to pick up the cigarette butt and hand it back to Klaus, who pinched the tip between licked fingers and dropped it into his pocket.

“We’re the ones whose names he carves next to his own.”

Klaus turned his head to look at him.

“Diego’s got a lot of damage,” Ben said. “There’s a lot he keeps close to his chest. He’s like you that way.”

“Wh-” Klaus frowned. “What do you mean? Not that I don’t have ex-girlfriends, but I don’t recall any of them getting brutally murdered.”

“Would you ever have told us about your mom, if your grandma hadn’t sent you that money?”

“I talk about my mom all the time!”

“But you never really told us what she did to you,” Ben pointed out. “I knew she was homophobic. I didn’t know she- she-”

“Tried to beat the gay out of me? Repeatedly? For almost a decade?” Klaus slouched further into the fortress of his shoulders. “Yeah, well, what would be the point of telling you all that? It’s not like you can do anything about it now. Why would I go looking for pity?”

“Do you think maybe Diego feels the same way?” Ben said gently.

Klaus glared at his knees for a moment. “Maybe.” He scowled, then sighed. “What am I supposed to do about it?”

Ben turned and glanced over the base of the statue at Diego and Hazel, who had straightened up and were talking now.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But perhaps talking to him would be a good start. Maybe he doesn’t know what to do either. Maybe you can figure it out together.”

When he looked back at Klaus he had his face turned towards the sky, a tiny little smile creeping in at the corner of his mouth.

“Hey Ben, I think I just worked out what you should study at college.”

“Oh?”

“Life coaching. Become the next Tony Robbins.”

Ben laughed. “Oh God, I don’t think I’m extroverted enough to yell advice at that many people. That’s more your kind of thing.”

“Pfft, fuck no. I can’t even sort out my own shit, you think I can help other people with theirs?”

“Maybe if it’s fashion-related.”

Klaus snorted and sat up to arch the chill of the marble out of his back. “That’s not a bad idea, Bentacles.” He put a hand on the base of the statue to haul himself to his feet, then extended it to Ben. “Should we go figure this thing out?”

As they approached the concrete planter, Diego turned towards them.

“Hey,” he said, and his voice was still raspy, nose red, eyes wet, but he had a self-conscious little smile on his face. It was an offer - a chance to brush this all aside, to shrug it off as a moment of weakness and go about the rest of their day pretending it hadn’t happened.

Klaus made a different choice.

Standing in front of Diego he held out his hands, and when Diego stood up Klaus wrapped his arms around him. Without a word he closed his eyes and rested his chin on Diego’s shoulder, and he held him. Diego gave Klaus’s back an awkward pat, but Klaus did not let go; he held fast, and after a minute Diego’s hands crept around Klaus’s hips. As Diego’s head settled against Klaus’s, Ben could see a fraction of the tension ease out of his shoulders.


	11. Chapter 11

As fall went on the days grew darker, and the three of them drew closer together in a number of ways. Ben’s room was now uninhabitably cold, and he barely went in there other than to grab clothes, preferring instead to spend his afternoons curled up against the chimney at the head of Klaus’s bed. He still hadn’t managed to pick the lock on room 8, which was becoming more and more frustrating - alternating nights between Klaus and Diego felt weird and unbalanced, and he was very conscious that in doing so he was keeping them from having any nights with each other.

Still, they seemed to see enough of each other during the day. More than once Ben had walked into Diego’s room to find him pinned against the wardrobe, his shirt untucked and throat flushed red with kisses as Klaus mouthed his way along Diego’s jaw. They always sprang apart when Ben walked in, but it seemed to be less an unwillingness to make out in front of him and more of a reluctance to do so without involving him. 

Diego, now armed with reading glasses, had become a studying machine. Ben had thought him diligent before, but with his newfound ability to actually see the page in front of him he was suddenly leaping miles ahead in the textbook, taking the same time he’d once spent reading a single page and packing a whole chapter into it.

“I figured out how to m- make the words stay put in my head!” he enthused to Ben as they climbed the stairs to the attic to drop their books off before lunch. “I just have to put m- more stuff in at the same time, so that the other stuff falls out first and the words stay.”

Ben pondered that. “Give me an example.”

“Well if I try to sit still and study in silence, the words all bounce around and fall out of my brain, right? But if I’m p- playing with my knife and listening to music, it’s like those things fill the empty space so that the words can just slot in where they need to go!”

Sure enough, the more occupied Diego was the more productive he seemed to be. Sitting at his desk with his earbuds in, knife spinning in one hand and pen moving in the other, he raced through three pages of history in the time it took Ben to coach Klaus through one calculus problem - possibly because in order to understand anything mathematical, Klaus first had to work out how he could apply it to fabric.

“I just don’t get what the tangent _does_ ,” Klaus muttered, scratching along the top of his ear with the sharp end of his pencil.

“I- it’s-” Ben sighed and rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes. He had a feeling he was learning more about dressmaking this year than Klaus was about differential calculus.

As Ben searched his brain for some practical application of a tangent and Klaus slouched back against the headboard, Diego began to hum under his breath.

“He’s having a good time,” Klaus observed. “Which of his playlists is this?”

Ben shook his head. “Not sure.”

Then Diego began tapping his foot on the floor, and with the beat to anchor the tune it began to click into place in Ben’s brain.

“No, wait-” He paused while Diego turned the page, took a breath, and resumed humming. “Is it-?”

Tentatively, he tried some lyrics to the tune.

“ _-Lying here, with no-one near,_ _  
_ _Only you-_ ”

“I don’t know this song,” Klaus said, but Ben was sure of it now.

“ _-When I say softly,_ _  
_ _Slowly…_ ”

Diego looked up, startled back into the real world, and as he caught Ben’s eye he grinned and took one earbud out.

“ _Hold me closer, Tiny Dancer,_ _  
_ _Count the headlights on the highway-_ ”

“Oh no, I lied,” Klaus said, “I totally do know this!”

“ _Lay me down in sheets of linen-_ ”

Diego joined in, bringing Ben more accurately onto the beat. Klaus didn’t seem to know the lyrics, but he hummed along.

“ _Hold me closer, Tiny Dancer,_ _  
_ _Count the headlights on the highway._ _  
_ _Lay me down in sheets of linen,_ _  
_ _You had a busy day today._ ”

Diego pushed his textbook away and got up, arching his back before flopping down on the bed between the two of them. After a moment he unplugged his headphones and set them down on the bedside table along with his glasses; the song seemed to be finished.

“That seems like a good p- point to pause. How are you two doing over here?”

“Trying to figure out real-world applications of tangents to a curve,” Ben said.

“If you’re driving around a corner and your car starts to skid,” Diego supplied.

“I don’t drive,” Klaus said. “Anything fabric-related?”

“Uh.” Diego pursed his lips for a moment. “You’re trying to sew a circle or something and you lose your grip on the fabric. The sewing m- machine will keep stitching a line tangential to the curve.”

Klaus pulled the textbook towards him and took another look at the diagram. “That’s the line I’m stitching?”

Diego craned his neck to look at the page without sitting up. “Yep.”

“And that’s the line I end up stitching instead?”

“Yep.”

“Right, okay!” Klaus tucked the pencil behind his ear and picked up the textbook to have another go at making sense of it.

“Incredible,” Ben murmured, as Klaus began making notes in the margin of the page. “You should be a teacher.”

“Eh,” Diego shrugged. “I like to picture things visually sometimes. It helps make them stick.”

“Can you two be quiet?” Klaus said. “I’m on a roll here, and you’re very distracting. Go somewhere else if you want to talk.”

“This is _my room_ ,” Diego pointed out.

“Uh-huh, and I just made a mathematical breakthrough, so _shh._ ”

Diego rolled his eyes and slipped off the bed, taking Ben’s hand to drag him along. “C’mon, Benny. Let’s leave him to his eureka moment.”

Klaus didn’t look up from his scribbling, though he did give them a wave as Ben pulled the door shut behind them.

“I’m seriously impressed at how good a teacher you are,” Ben said, as they weighed up their options and decided on Klaus’s room. “You should be the one helping him with math, not me.”

Diego shook his head. “I don’t have the patience for it. You’re the one with the endless good n- nature, and all that shit.”

“ _All that shit_?” Ben grinned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know.” Diego waved a hand, seeming to encompass all that Ben was. “You’re _sweet._ ”

Ben raised an eyebrow, equal parts tickled and bashful at that. “Am I?”

“Yes, wh- _yes._ ” Diego cupped a hand under Ben’s chin and kissed him, as if to prove the point. “Have you literally ever been anything other than kind in your entire life?”

Ben thought about that. “One time in the ninth grade I told one of my classmates that his mullet looked good, but it really didn’t.”

“See, that’s my point.” Diego’s thumbs stroked the length of Ben’s cheekbones. “Your version of _mean_ is excessively polite.”

“But it wasn’t true!” Ben protested. “He got bullied for it!”

“So you’re telling me you were the one p- person to say something nice about his hair in a whole sea of cruelty, and you think that was unkind.”

“No, I-” Ben faltered, floundered, and was spared having to justify himself any further by Diego laughing and kissing him again, his fingers slipping into Ben’s hair and tilting his head at just the right angle. Ben rose up onto his tiptoes almost by instinct and wrapped his arms around Diego’s neck, letting himself melt forward.

“You don’t have to defend yourself,” Diego murmured. “It’s not a bad thing to be kind.”

“I can be mean if I want to be,” Ben insisted, but Diego just grinned and nipped another tiny kiss to his lips, pulling him closer until Ben’s foot caught on the uneven edge of a floorboard and he toppled over with a squeak of fright. Diego didn’t quite catch him, but he did manage to divert his path so that he fell onto the bed rather than the radiator.

“Oops, sorry.”

Ben waved his concern away and sat up, rubbing his elbow - there was something hard beneath the sheets, and he’d fallen directly on it. When he pulled the blanket back, it turned out to be Klaus’s tin of mints.

“Why is this in your bed, Klaus?” Ben muttered, and despite the roll of his eyes it came out sounding fond.

“I dunno, but yes please,” Diego said, holding out his hand. Ben snorted and opened the tin to tip a mint out into Diego’s palm, but-

“Oh. That’s why.”

Ben snapped the tin shut lest the smell of marijuana permeate the door; Dr. Pogo’s nose was inconveniently sharp at the best of times.

“Idiot,” Diego sighed. “Here, I’ll put it back.”

Ben handed him the tin and watched as Diego walked over to the corner table, lifted the ceramic Mary off her base, and shoved the tin up her ass.

“What else has he got up there?” Ben asked. So far he’d only seen Klaus with weed, but he wasn’t entirely confident that was the extent of his dabbling in illicit substances.

“Uh.” Diego squinted at the contents of the statue. “Couple packs of smokes, I think that’s more weed there? And some pills.”

“What kind of pills?”

Diego shrugged. “Dunno. Probably Adderall or something.”

“There’s no like, heroin or anything, is there?”

“No.” Diego shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Good.” Ben sighed. “I worry about him.”

He flopped backwards onto the bed, and a moment later felt the mattress dip as Diego sat down beside him.

“Me too,” he said. “I wish I could… I dunno, I w- wanna be closer to him.”

Ben closed his eyes and nodded, trying to think through how to give Diego and Klaus more of each other in ways that they would accept. It seemed so obvious for them to spend a night or two with each other while he slept alone in the other room, but any time he suggested this they waved it away - Diego brusquely, and Klaus almost affectionately, like it was cute that Ben wanted them to be able to spend more time with each other. It was as if however much they wanted each other, it wasn’t enough to exclude him.

“I wish I could pick the lock,” he murmured.

After a moment of silence Diego shifted, and his hand covered Ben’s fist where it rested against his stomach. He gave it a gentle squeeze, then picked it up and held it between both hands, coaxing it open with soft fingers.

“Benny, I’m sorry.”

Ben opened his eyes to see Diego gazing into his palm, and he could almost have been reading it if it weren’t for the way his eyes kept moving back and forth along one single line - like a broken record, diverted every time by a crack that shouldn’t be there.

“Hey.” Ben sat up. “Don’t be, it’s okay.”

Diego bowed his head and pressed a kiss to Ben’s palm, right in the centre where the scarring was worst and the stitch marks had stretched into extra wisps of pink. It was gentle, and solemn, and it felt like atonement for something long ago forgiven.

“Hey,” Ben repeated, softer this time. “Diego.”

Diego’s lips moved against his palm but he didn’t lift his head, so Ben used that hand to turn Diego’s chin and bring him close enough to kiss.

It had about the effect he wanted. Diego leaned into him, his hand sliding around the back of Ben’s neck to hold him close, and all Ben had really intended to do was divert him from that guilty train of thought but as Diego wrapped an arm around his waist and dragged in a sharp breath against his lips Ben thought maybe this was good too.

That was his favourite thing about kissing Diego, he decided: every kiss always seemed to be as Earth-shatteringly momentous for him as it was for Ben. For all his own self-consciousness, which struck him as inherently virginal, Ben no longer felt like he was doing everything wrong; instead, it felt like they were figuring this out together, learning together, discovering together the things that everyone else seemed to already know but could not explain.

When Ben’s hands found their way to the front of Diego’s uniform shirt and clenched hard enough to pop the top button open, Diego pulled away just far enough to grin before turning and tucking his feet up so that he was kneeling on the bed beside Ben. His hands on Ben’s face were warm, the edge of his teeth persuasive against Ben’s bottom lip, and without really thinking about it Ben kicked off his shoes and scooted backwards on the bed so that he could pull Diego in between his knees.

“Oh yeah,” Diego muttered, and paused to tug off his own shoes, tossing them one at a time onto the floor with a clunk of black leather before turning back to Ben and crawling between his legs to drag him by the collar of his vest into an even deeper kiss.

_God,_ this was so much. Ben’s head was swirling, every breath catching as he wound his arms around Diego’s neck. Diego’s hands were moving over his waist, over his hips, over the backs of his thighs, and then the tip of Diego’s fingers caught the hem of Ben’s shorts and the very suggestion of that touch underneath his clothes had him curling forward, all his breath gone against the flushed skin of Diego’s neck.

“Mm - Ben-” Diego’s hands retreated just enough to grip Ben’s thighs and tug him closer, dragging Ben’s legs over his knees until Ben was almost sitting in his lap. Then he roamed back up, dragging his palms up the front of Ben’s vest to hold him by the shoulders and kiss the pulse underneath his jaw.

“Oh my God,” Ben gasped. Diego was lighting fires under his skin without even touching him, he was burning, boiling-

He was sweating, in an uncomfortable and really unsexy way.

“Hang on,” Ben said, leaning back. “I’m so hot.”

“Yeah, you are,” Diego smirked, and Ben took a moment to swat in the direction of his nose before peeling his vest off over his head and folding it neatly onto the bed beside him.

“It’s so freaking warm in here.”

“Mhm.” Diego seemed distracted, shuffling forward on his knees and reaching out to run a hand down the front of Ben’s shirt until he reached his stomach. There he stopped, waited, and took a steady breath before curling his fingers into the fabric of Ben’s shirt and pulling it untucked from his shorts.

_Oh hell, oh fuck._ Ben had never been religious, but he was suddenly very conscious of the Virgin Mary watching him from the corner as he leaned back on his hands and let Diego slowly unbutton his shirt. _How’s this for desecration, Klaus?_ Surprised by his own thought, he laughed, and then clapped a hand over his mouth as Diego gave him a confused look.

“Sorry, sorry, I-”

“Should I not?”

“No, keep going.” Ben tugged Diego’s hands back to his half-open shirt, leaning forward to give him a quick kiss as he did so. “I just thought of something funny. Don’t worry. Keep going.”

Diego still looked confused, but he did resume unbuttoning Ben’s shirt until the two sides came apart in his hands and he could duck his head to give him one soft, hesitant kiss just below the collarbone.

“Oh _shit,_ ” Ben whispered, and when Diego nosed along and began sucking a similar kiss under the other collarbone it was impossible to resist bringing one hand to the back of his head and holding him in place. “Diego, if you keep doing that I’m-”

Already the skin of his chest was prickling to the touch of Diego’s lips, and it was becoming very difficult not to squirm where he sat. Even Diego’s strong hands on his waist only made him want to press into that grip in every direction at once.

Diego’s hold shifted down slightly, and the tip of his finger found itself tucked in under Ben’s belt. His lips were still moving across Ben’s chest, leaving a trail of stars that Ben could feel burning through his skin long after Diego had moved on.

“ _Please,_ ” he found himself saying, his fingers curled into Diego’s hair and every breath a silent prayer for some sort of _more_ without even really knowing what more there might be.

Diego lifted his head and met Ben’s eyes, gaze quiet and serious despite the flush across his cheeks.

“Do you w- want me to touch you?”

Ben’s stomach coiled and shivered, and the distracting fuzz of it through his brain was so all-encompassing that all he could think to say was, “Where?”

Diego didn’t speak for a moment. Then his hands slowly slid around to the front of Ben’s shorts and rested either side of his belt buckle. “Here.”

The next breath out of Ben’s throat was a high-pitched rasp, and he felt his hips twitch towards Diego’s touch. Diego didn’t move, and Ben realised he was going to have to dig some more words out of a brain that was currently tap dancing over the idea of Diego’s hands on his skin underneath his clothes, inside his briefs, on his-

“Yeah,” he groaned. “Yeah, that- yeah.”

Perhaps a small part of Ben’s brain shorted out when Diego unbuckled his belt and pulled down the zipper of his uniform shorts. It would explain the absolutely shameless moan that had Diego hushing him before Ben had even identified the sound as his own.

“Sorry,” he gasped, a belated hand over his mouth.

“Pretty sure the whole floor just heard that,” Diego whispered, but he was grinning. He leaned forward for a kiss, and with his nose still tracing across Ben’s cheek he reached into his underwear and pulled out his cock.

Ben’s brain _definitely_ short-circuited at that, and if Diego’s mouth hadn’t been right there silencing him he was fairly sure he would have alerted not only the floor but the rest of the building as well. Somehow he couldn’t quite bring himself to apologise for it, especially when Diego’s hand began to move in short, careful strokes.

“Oh, fuck-”

“ _Shhh._ ” Diego took his unoccupied hand and curled it around the back of Ben’s neck to bring him into another silencing kiss. “You gotta be quiet, baby.”

_Jesus H. Christ,_ Ben thought wildly, _is that supposed to help me?_ Something about Diego, all flames and sharp edges, calling him _baby_ in that dark, whispered tone, had him shivering inside his skin. When Diego’s thumb brushed under the head of his cock, that shiver turned into a full-body shake, and it was all Ben could do to turn his head and press it into Diego’s waiting lips before it became audible.

“You’re gonna make me come,” Ben whispered, when he thought he could trust his voice.

“I would hope so,” Diego replied, and another swipe of his thumb had Ben’s breath catching in his throat.

Everything turned to fuzz, and Ben almost wanted to say _wait, slow down, let me just stay here for a while,_ but Diego was pushing him through that shivering sensation to the other side, where everything dissolved into heat and Ben’s breath shuddered out in a rush against Diego’s cheek.

“Shit,” he gasped, and then Diego was kissing him quiet, his hand still moving to drag the last of it out of him. He kept going like that, in soft strokes, until Ben twitched back from his touch and dropped his forehead to rest on Diego’s shoulder.

There was a long moment of regained breath. Ben leaned into Diego’s arm, and Diego’s lips pressed against Ben’s hair, and Ben stared down at the frankly surprising amount of come on his own stomach. Was he always going to come this quickly from someone else’s touch? He hadn’t exactly been watching the clock, but that had seemed like a matter of only a few minutes.

“You good?” Diego murmured against his temple.

Ben blinked and took another steadying breath. “Yeah.” He sat up and tried to wriggle some life back into his toes, then reached for Diego’s belt.

But Diego pulled back. “No, don’t-”

“Wh-” Ben stopped with his hand halfway to Diego’s crotch. There was definitely a boner there, no question about it - so why wouldn’t Diego let him return the favour? “You don’t want-?”

Diego shook his head. “No, I- I-” he seemed to struggle for a moment. “I’m happy w- with just you, right now.”

“Oh.” That still didn’t feel like a full answer to Ben. “Is it… is it me?”

“No!” Diego’s hands were reassuring on his cheeks. “No, it’s genuinely just, I d- don’t want to yet. It’s not you.”

“Okay.” The small cloud of doubt in Ben’s chest cleared a little bit. “Did you just wipe come on my face?”

“I-” Diego looked at his hand, then grimaced. “Maybe.”

“Gross.”

“Does Klaus have any t- tissues in here?”

“He probably uses socks.”

Diego pretended to gag, then wriggled a hand into his pocket and came out holding a neatly folded handkerchief.

“Forgive me, Grace,” he muttered, carefully wiping Ben’s face clean before turning to the mess on his stomach. There was almost a religious reverence in his voice, as if Grace were more Holy Mother than House Mom - and that reminded Ben.

“What?” Diego said, looking absolutely baffled as Ben curled forward in sudden, convulsive giggles. “What did I do?”

“Nothing, nothing-” Ben gasped for breath, a hand across his eyes to try and tamp down the hysteria as Diego zipped his shorts back up. “I just remembered why I was laughing earlier.”

“Why?”

Too choked up with laughter to speak, Ben let his hand flop sideways to point across the room at the corner table, where the Blessed Virgin watched them with open hands and an expression somehow more stone than ceramic.

“Oh, for-” Diego threw the wadded-up handkerchief at her. “That’s just creepy.” He lay down on the bed and pulled Ben into his arms, one warm hand tucked inside his open shirt.

“I’ve got to figure out how to pick that lock,” Ben said, “cause I am _not_ fooling around with her watching me every time.”

“If I’d known I was giving my f- first handjob in front of the Virgin Mary, I’d have b- blessed your dick first or something.”

Ben snorted, equal parts amused and disturbed at the mental image of Diego consecrating his junk. Then he paused.

“You’ve never done that before?”

“Ben, I’d never even kissed a b- boy before you, do you really think I’d touched a dick?”

“Well no, but I thought you and Klaus might-”

“Klaus has attempted to stick his hands in my p- pants several times, and when I’ve told him to fuck off each time he’s taken it as a complete shutdown. You give him a tiny no and he backs off so far he just about puts his ass through the opposite wall.”

“Could that be because you’re telling him to _fuck off_?”

Diego pinched his waist, and it felt like an eyeroll. “I’m not literally telling him to fuck off. I mean, not every time.”

Ben tried to mentally place himself in the room and work out where they were misunderstanding each other. “Have you told him why?”

“Do I n- need a reason to say no?”

“No, no, that’s- no, of course not.” Ben turned his head to press a kiss to Diego’s temple. “But have you explained that you just want to focus on him?”

There was a quiet snort into the crook of his neck. “Of course, Ben. You know how great Klaus and I are at using our big boy words with each other.”

“Okay, you don’t have to get sassy at me.” Ben tried his hardest not to grin, but everything was just so fuzzy and comfortable, and Diego’s heart was so strong pressed against his arm. “Do I need to stage an intervention for you two?”

“Is that w- what they’re calling threesomes these days?”

It was such an unexpectedly Klaus-ish thing to hear from Diego’s mouth that Ben choked on air, and by the time he stopped coughing Diego was giggling into his collarbone, pushing himself up on one elbow to kiss his way up Ben’s neck until he reached his ear.

“I always feel m- more confident with you,” he whispered, voice so soft as to be little more than breath against Ben’s skin.

_Oh, me too._ Ben cupped a hand to Diego’s cheek and just held him, eyes closed, bathing in the strange spark of delight at finding himself reflected in another person’s soul.

Then the door opened.

“‘We’ll let you study, Klaus. We won’t distract you.’” Klaus kicked the door shut behind him. “‘We won’t go right through the wall and _fuck on your bed without you._ ’ You two are atrocious.”

“I’m not sorry,” Ben grinned, and Diego snorted a laugh as he settled back onto the bed beside him.

“I know you’re not,” Klaus sighed, long-suffering. “Where did you put my weed? It’s time to get litty titty.”

“Up M- Mary’s butt,” Diego said. “I hope you know I just had a surge of Catholic guilt like I haven’t felt in years when I realised she w- was watching us.”

“Serves you right.” Klaus lifted the statue and pulled out the repurposed mint tin. “Do you want to come up on the roof and smoke with me, or are you high enough on the afterglow?”

“The afterglow is one-sided,” Ben pointed out, “and it’s the side that doesn’t smoke.”

“Oh?” Klaus turned to face them, one eyebrow raised. “Are you a selfish lover, Bentacles? I would never have guessed.”

Diego made a frustrated noise into Ben’s shirt sleeve. “I told you it’s not just you, Klaus.”

“Ah, yes.” Klaus smirked, but some sort of tension had eased from his jaw. “Of course, Dee. I forgot you’re playing your long-term edging game.”

“I’m-!” Diego’s face went bright red and he stuttered into silence. Before he could untangle his tongue Klaus leaned over the bed and kissed him, slowly and deeply enough that Diego’s leg twitched against Ben’s thigh.

“I’m kidding,” Klaus said. “Now do you want to come smoke with me or not?”

Diego nodded, ears still steaming.

“Good,” Klaus said, and with another quick kiss to Diego’s lips and a matching one to Ben’s he turned and hoisted himself out the window.

There was a moment of silence in the room. Then:

“God, he’s so f- fucking hot.”

“God, I know.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise, I'm back. You really thought I would abandon this fic?
> 
> I've been working on a couple other things since I last updated this - some fics for The Untamed, which I've just posted in the last few days, and also the Feels Like Flying prequel, which is *deep sigh* so close to being almost done. My brain has so many stories, and my hands can only type so fast. 
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

At a point it became clear that Ben’s hand had reached a plateau of usefulness, at least for the short term. Anything fiddlier than a pen met with limited success, and Ben had to accept that the bobby pins of room 8 were never going to work in his favour. He was just going to have to find another way.

He admitted as much to Vanya one afternoon as he watched her tune her violin. He’d spent the morning making one last attempt at picking the lock, and when the only result had been a nauseating cramp that had drawn his hand almost into a claw he’d thrown the pins down in frustration and curled up against the wall to try and nurse his fingers back into a usable state. After a few minutes, Vanya had cracked her door open and dragged him in for music and sympathy.

“I just feel like I’m holding us back, you know?”

Vanya gave a considering hum. “I understand that feeling. Is there… I dunno, any other way you can get in? Some different kind of tool you could use to pick the lock?”

“I don’t know,” Ben sighed. “I feel like Klaus would have suggested it by now - this is his area of expertise.” He watched her flick through the music on the desk for a moment. “Play that one that’s like-” he hummed the few chorus notes he could remember.

“All I Ask Of You?” Vanya said. Ben shrugged, then nodded as she played the answering line back to him. Thumbing through her music folder, she pulled the sheets out and set them on her stand, then tucked her violin into her shoulder.

As she set her bow to the strings, Ben closed his eyes and let himself drift into a world where he sat not in the second-coldest room of the attic of the most prestigious boarding school in the state, but in a velvet concert hall among ancient stone and storied arches - and suddenly the chill he felt was not from the ill-sealed window frame, but from the first caress of silver notes against his skin.

How nice it must be, he thought, to have this sort of music at your fingertips. Ben had never felt particularly lonely as an only child, but now he wished he could have grown up with a sister like Vanya, wished the admiration he felt for her skill could be steeped with pride at having seen her progress from first notes to full symphonies. Being able to cross the hallway and pull any emotion he needed from her music folder was such a reassuring constant these days; what might it have been like to have that reset button in the days when he had none of the English words for what he felt and no-one to use the Korean ones with?

It took a moment for him to realise that the music had ended. Opening his eyes, he found Vanya observing him with something soft and amused playing across her face.

“I almost felt like I should just keep going in a medley or something,” she said. “You looked like you were off somewhere else.”

_In the future of an alternate past,_ Ben thought. “You play so beautifully.” It came out close to a whisper - too soft to be anything but sincere.

Vanya ducked her chin and allowed an irrepressible grin for her music stand, seeming to wrestle with the idea of accepting a compliment without deflection.

“Can I tell you a secret?” she said, looking up at Ben without lifting her head.

“Sure.”

She bit her lip for a moment, then allowed her smile to widen. “I applied for a scholarship at Berklee.”

“What?” Ben sat up straight. “No way, that’s amazing!”

“I won’t know if I’ve got it for a while,” she said, “but I decided… why not take the jump, right?”

“Yeah,” Ben nodded vigorously. “Oh man, that’d be so cool. It’s in Boston, right? So if I ended up at Harvard we’d be close!”

“We could be roommates.”

“Yeah. Hah. Yeah!” Ben allowed the thought of it: living in a little apartment together in Cambridge, sharing a tiny living room, cooking meals together, listening to Vanya practise her violin through the wall in the evening while he studied… something.

Ben sighed. “Vanya, I have no idea what I want to do after high school.”

“Didn’t you just say Harvard?”

“Yeah, but that’s a school, not a subject.”

“Oh, I see.” She rested her chin against the head of her violin. “What do you enjoy most at school?”

“I dunno,” he shrugged. “I don’t really have one all-time favourite subject, I just like learning in general.”

“Philosophy,” Vanya said, then laughed as Ben choked. “No, I’m kidding. I don’t know, Ben. Maybe you could take a gap year and figure out what you really want to do.”

Ben wrinkled his nose. “I’d hate feeling left behind. And I don’t think my parents would go for it.”

“The left behind feeling only lasts a little while,” she said. “I took a year off school when my mom died, and once I was back I got used to my new year group pretty quickly.”

“Oh. I didn’t know- I’m sorry about your mom.”

She shrugged. “It’s okay. Cancer, you know? It sucks. But it’s okay.”

There was a moment of silence, during which Ben struggled to think of words that weren’t just recycled sympathy already spent on Diego and Klaus. Then Vanya flipped to the next pocket in her music folder, pulled out a new piece, and set her bow to the strings.

-

“Blue or green, you guys?”

Ben lifted his head from Diego’s lap and squinted down at the two ribbons Klaus was brandishing from the floor.

“Blue,” Diego said, without looking up from his essay plan.

“What happened to the red?” Ben asked. “I liked the red.”

“I have a theme,” Klaus said. “Red doesn’t fit my theme.”

“Then blue,” Ben agreed, earning himself a scratch behind the ear from Diego’s pencil.

Klaus pursed his lips and eyed the two ribbons. “Green,” he decided, throwing the blue over his shoulder and picking up a pin.

Diego snorted. “Why did you even ask?”

“To see whether I liked your answer,” Klaus said. “I can’t expect either of you to know anything about fashion, but I can trust you to give me the wrong answer when I need it.”

“I don’t know whether to be flattered or offended,” Ben muttered, and picked up his book again.

“Both,” Diego replied. “Always both. Every d- day.”

Ben snorted a laugh and reached back across Diego’s lap. Without a word, Diego peeled a sticky note off the pad and handed it to him.

“Klaus, what did you make of the _straight and fast_ bit?” Ben fixed the sticky note in beside that line. The tabs were getting denser and denser the further he got through the book - they’d gone from one or two per chapter to two or three per page just in the first half of the story.

“The what?” Klaus didn’t look up from the ribbon, which seemed to be shaping into a ruffle.

“How to get out of the labyrinth - straight and fast.” Ben waited for Klaus to reply, but he just kept working his needle through the satin. “In the margins of her book? That they find?”

“Is this the novel study?”

“Yes?”

Klaus paused to pinch the needle in between his lips as he snipped off the thread, then stuck it back into his pincushion. “I’m gonna give you a moment to figure out whether you think I’ve actually read the book.”

“Oh my god.” Ben shook his head and rested back on Diego’s knee. “You realise the essay is due next Friday, right?”

“It’s not that long a book, I can read it in a night.”

“And analyse it, and choose a topic, and construct a p- p- persuasive essay,” Diego said.

“Also, aside from anything else,” Ben added, “it’s kind of a fun book? Like. I think you would enjoy it.”

Diego nodded. “But also you might get some b- bad ideas from it.”

“Oh no, you’re right,” Ben said. “I changed my mind, Klaus, don’t read it.”

“What? Why?” Klaus looked up, second length of ribbon in hand. “What kind of bad ideas?”

“Nothing,” Ben assured him. “Nothing, it’s not a good idea, don’t read it.”

Klaus dropped the ribbon back into his sewing bag and rolled backwards to grab his copy from under the desk. “Fuck that, you can’t keep me away from bad ideas. My whole life is a bad idea.”

As Klaus opened the book to _One hundred and thirty-six days before,_ Ben glanced up and caught the shadow of a wink from Diego. Stifling a grin, he turned the page and grabbed another sticky note.

-

“Bentacles.”

“Mm.” Ben did not look up from the page; it had taken him a solid five minutes to figure out how to word this sentence, and he was not planning on losing the thread of it now.

“Take your shirt off.”

“I-” Ben blinked, frowned at the wall, then dropped his pen. The sentence was gone. “Really? Now?”

“I’m trying to get this finished. Help me out.”

He turned around to see Klaus wrestling with a strip of fabric, a handful of pins, and-

“Is that one of your school shirts?”

“It _was_ one of my school shirts,” Klaus corrected him. “ _Now_ it’s something I would be seen dead wearing in public. Or it will be, if I can just get this to sit right. Take your shirt off, I need to see how it falls on an actual person.”

Ben pursed his lips, eyeing the shirt. “I’m trying to work on my essay. Which I feel like you should also be doing-”

“I can’t focus on that until this is done,” Klaus interrupted him. “You can keep working! I just need your back.”

Out of arguments, Ben sighed and tugged his sweater off over his head.

“Keep going,” Klaus said, “otherwise I’m gonna end up stitching this to your shirt.”

“Better that than my skin,” Ben muttered, but he pulled his T-shirt off and tossed it together with the sweater onto Klaus’s bed. Before he could begin to shiver, Klaus had wrestled him into the shirt and snatched up his pincushion again.

“Okay, keep working,” he said. “I’m good from here.”

Straddling the desk chair with his chin on the backrest, Ben resumed picking away at his essay while Klaus picked at his back. Having a live model seemed to be the solution to Klaus’s problems - the cursing ceased, and while the whole endeavour did appear to be an exercise in trial and error, his fingers were deft and gentle as they slid pins past Ben’s skin without a single scratch.

“How’s the essay going?” Klaus murmured after a few minutes.

Ben attempted a shrug, but found it restrained by Klaus’s hand. “Fine,” he said. “I’ve got my points, I just need to work them into a coherent conclusion. And make sure it’s long enough. What about yours?”

Klaus made a dismissive noise between his teeth. “I have an approximate word count of zero.”

It was as if Klaus could feel the roll of Ben’s eyes through his spine, because the next pinch of his fingers was to Ben’s skin rather than the shirt.

“Please tell me you’ve at least finished the book,” Ben said.

“Of course I’ve finished the book. I just haven’t written anything about it yet.”

“You’re gonna run out of time,” Ben predicted. “You’ll end up scrambling to get it down on paper with five minutes to go and run out of time to do anything more than a draft.”

“Draft,” Klaus snorted. “What draft?”

“Your first draft. The one you have to attach to your good copy. Did you actually read the assignment?”

“I leave that up to you. I don’t do drafts, Benny.”

Ben lifted his chin off the chair and turned around to squint at Klaus. “If you don’t turn in a draft you will fail. It’s literally in bold, italicised, underlined on the handout.”

“I didn’t say I won’t _turn in_ a draft,” Klaus said.

When he didn’t elaborate, Ben frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“Well isn’t a draft just when you take your essay and put some mistakes in it?” Klaus shrugged. “Once I’ve written it I’ll just copy it out again and then go through it with a red pen to make it worse.”

“I…” Ben stared at him, his brain slowly melting out his ears as Klaus picked up a spool of thread and began measuring out a new length for his needle. “Klaus- I- how.”

“How what?” Klaus put the tip of the needle between his lips and reached for the scissors to snip off the thread.

“How do you find every possible way to make your life harder?”

“With great practise.”

“Why would you write a whole extra draft when you could just be keeping track of your editing as you go? That’s so much extra work!”

“Nah.” Klaus stuck the needle back into the pincushion and picked up two identical strips of fabric to compare them. “What’s extra work is trying to write an essay before I know what it’s gonna say. Why would I bother writing shit down when I know I’m just gonna change my mind about it as soon as I figure out the next sentence?”

Ben floundered for a moment. “Because that’s how drafts work!”

Klaus blew a raspberry. “My way’s better.”

“I’m- you- _God,_ you’re unbelievable.”

Setting the fabric aside, Klaus set his hands on his hips and turned to Ben.

“Bentacles. You seem like you’re a bit of a grizzle grump today.”

“I am _frustrated_.” Ben turned around to sit facing Klaus. “I can’t figure out how I want to word this paragraph, I’m so sick of the stupid labyrinth I might just go straight and fast myself, and I don’t understand how you can just write a finished essay right off the bat!”

Klaus smirked - not unkindly, but still so infuriatingly. “Ah, Benny boy.” Pushing Ben’s knees apart, he slid onto the chair in front of him. With Klaus’s legs hooked underneath his thighs, Ben suddenly found himself sandwiched tightly between Klaus’s chest and the wooden backrest of the chair.

“Hey-”

“You and I are very different creatures, Ben,” Klaus said. “You like to do things properly. You follow the guidelines, and you show your working, and you make sure you tick all the boxes as you go along.” He lifted a hand and pushed it into Ben’s hair, taking the frustrated tangle of it and pulling it aside to clear space for the frown on his forehead. “Whereas I, Bentacles, I prefer to spend my time beating myself up inside my own head and refusing to acknowledge that I even have an idea until I’ve berated all the ugly out of it and got it perfect.”

“Why?” It wasn’t a conscious choice, to lean into the presence of Klaus’s palm at his temple.

“Because.” Klaus’s thumb traced thoughtfully along Ben’s eyebrow. “I prefer my mistakes to be deliberate.”

He leaned forward and pecked a kiss to the tip of Ben’s nose. Ben tilted his chin up, but Klaus was already sliding back off the chair, scooping the pincushion up off the floor and winding the loose thread back onto its spool.

“I think that’s all I’m getting done on that today,” Klaus said, nodding towards the shirt. “It looks good on you. Maybe I’ll take the sides in a bit to give you a waist.”

Ben tucked his hands into the sleeves and looked down at the buttons on his chest, which were now bright red instead of the standard-issue white.

“I don’t know that I’d wear it,” he admitted. The whole thing was very flamboyant, very quintessentially Klaus; he wasn’t sure whether he could pull it off.

“It suits you,” Klaus insisted. “It gives you some fire.”

_No, that’s you,_ Ben thought. The spark of confidence he felt in Klaus’s clothes had nothing to do with the clothes themselves.

“Don’t move,” Klaus said.

“Hm?” Dragged from that thought, Ben glanced up.

“I said don’t move.” Klaus reached over and tapped the top of Ben’s head. “Whatever you were just thinking, think it again.”

Ben’s puzzled look was met with another tap, so he dropped his chin again and contemplated the pearly buttons at the cuff of each sleeve. He could just see the shadow of Klaus moving at the edge of his vision. 

A moment of silence; then, quietly, “Yeah.”

“Can I move?”

Klaus laughed. “Yeah, yeah. I just had to- I had to get that.”

Glancing up, Ben saw Klaus looking at his phone. Looking wasn’t quite the right word - he was beaming, glowing, quietly enamoured with whatever he saw there.

“What-?”

Silently, Klaus turned the phone around to show him. Ben blinked, then cringed.

“Klaus!”

In the photo, his posture looked terrible. He didn’t feel as if he was slouching, but he sure looked like it with the way his shoulders rolled forward like that. His legs were still spread as they’d been when Klaus had slid off the chair, his hands curled lazily beneath the too-long sleeves - there was even a slice of his pale stomach on display between the open sides of the shirt. 

“Why- Klaus, I-”

“You’re stunning,” Klaus murmured, eyes on the screen again.

“No I’m _not,_ why are you taking pictures of me?”

Klaus looked up at him, suddenly serious. “Yes, you are. You’re hot as _fuck,_ and you look so effortlessly good when you do that serious face. I wanna put you on the cover of GQ or something, damn.” He slid his phone back into his pocket and shuffled forward to place his hands on Ben’s knees, heedless of the blush creeping up his face. “And I’m taking pictures because a) you’re wearing my clothes and I want reference photos of how they look, and b) I like to document the beautiful things in my life.”

“ _Stop._ ” Ben squirmed under Klaus’s gaze, even more so under his hands, and when Klaus hooked a finger through the belt loops of Ben’s jeans and pulled him forward on the chair he clapped both hands over his face to try and press the blush back into his skin. It didn’t work - it only spread down his chest to meet Klaus’s lips in the soft space below his breastbone where ribs became stomach.

“Here,” Klaus said, “take this off.”

He was tugging at the shirt, but Ben felt too exposed already. “Why, I-”

“Because you’ve got a row of pins down your back and you’re one wrong move away from a whole lot of pain.” Klaus stood up and pushed the shirt back off Ben’s shoulders, carefully peeling it away without disturbing the pinned strip. He gave it a little shake to straighten the sleeves, set it on the desk beside Ben’s essay, and reached over to grab the discarded T-shirt and sweater from the bed. “You can put these back on if you want.”

It was so serious, so sober - closer to the kind of attention he might expect from Diego - and Ben shook his head even as he took his clothes back.

“You’re giving me whiplash,” he said. “Do you want to make out with me or not?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Klaus said. “Benny, my boy, let me make this perfectly clear: I always. Always. Want to make out with you. _Always._ ”

“H-”

“But I’m also getting some big uncomfortable vibes from you right now. Not to suggest that I’m not the most oblivious bitch in existence, but I do know how to recognise when someone is not down to get horizontal.”

For a couple of seconds, all Ben could do was stare at him. Klaus was picking up the scraps of thread and fabric from the floor, neither looking at Ben nor avoiding his eyes, and it was jarring how quickly he seemed able to go from all on to all off.

_Just about puts his ass through the opposite wall,_ Ben thought.

“Is this what you do when Diego tells you to fuck off?” he wondered.

Klaus’s laugh was abrupt, surprised.

“Okay, Diego gives me exactly nothing in terms of subtle signals. He’s totally blank until suddenly there’s a knife at your throat.”

“Yeah, you know, some people might use _words_ in a situation like that?”

“Me? Diego? Words? What are we, adults?”

Ben sighed and yanked his T-shirt over his head. “You know he wants you, right?”

“I know he wants _something,_ I just can’t for the life of me work out what.”

“Then _ask him._ ” When Klaus only pursed his lips Ben relented a little, searching for the most useful thing he could say without stifling all necessity for them to communicate better between themselves. “He wants to give so much,” he said. “He’s just not comfortable receiving those things himself.”

“Ah.” Klaus tapped his own chin knowingly. “So he’s a top, is what you’re saying.”

“ _No-_ ” Ben pressed his face into his hands as Klaus laughed. “God, you’re so-”

“You’re too easy,” Klaus snickered. “You and Diego, I swear you’re as bad as each other.” Leaning over, he scooped the shirt off the desk and began folding it so the pins were carefully inwards. “Alright, you can go back to the labyrinth now.”

There was something about the fondness of Klaus’s grin; Ben leaned back in the chair, chin tilted up.

“Kiss me first.”

Klaus looked over, surprised. Ben held his gaze in spite of the heat gathering in the tips of his ears.

“Well, okay then.” He tossed the shirt onto the bed and turned to pop every ounce of Ben’s personal bubble, his knee on the chair between Ben’s thighs, hands braced on the desk either side of his arms. “Don’t tell me twice.”

Ben arched his back, wound his arms around Klaus’s neck, and allowed himself to get very distracted for a good ten minutes.

-

What an end to the week, Ben thought. So many assignments, and they all seemed to be due at the same time.

“God forbid they c- coordinate any of this,” Diego had muttered into Ben’s ear as they’d climbed the stairs to drop off their books. “They share a staff room, it would take them literally f- five minutes to not make our lives hell.”

Now, with all the essays submitted and the project outlines done, he could throw off his uniform and pull on the comfortable jeans that lived at the end of his bed in wait for just such an afternoon as this. There was still an hour until the dinner bell; it was time to go find Klaus.

Opening his door, he found that plan diverted.

“Ben,” Vanya said, grabbing him by the wrist and dragging him behind her as she marched down the corridor. “Just who I was looking for.”

It was almost fearsome, the way her skirt billowed behind her without a breath of wind. Startled speechless, Ben stumbled along in her wake until she had the door of room 7 shut and locked behind them.

“Vanya,” he gasped, “what’s going on?”

“I just got hauled in to see Hargreeves.”

That aura of intimidating power still gathered around her; Ben had the sudden feeling that he’d been severely underestimating Vanya this whole time. “Oh?”

“He found out about Berklee.”

Ben’s heart sank. “Is he mad about it?”

Vanya shook her head. “He’s not upset that I applied there, but he’s beyond furious that I haven’t applied anywhere else.”

“What?”

“He said I’ve got ‘so much more potential,’ and that I’m ‘wasting my life on a dream,’ as if I’m doomed to fail as a musician. He couldn’t understand why I don’t have a Plan B, or a more suitable Plan A.”

“Why don’t you?” Ben asked. “Have a Plan B, I mean.”

Vanya shrugged. “Because. I don’t want to do anything else. Music’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life, and I don’t see the point in wasting money on application fees for colleges I don’t want to go to. If I don’t get into Berklee, I’ll practise harder and apply again next year, but I’m not going to settle for some history or mathematics degree just because Sir Reginald doesn’t think the symphony’s a real career.”

“Wow,” Ben breathed. “Did you tell him that?”

“Do I look dead to you?” Vanya snorted. “No, I just nodded and smiled and told him I’d think about it and consider my options. But that wasn’t enough for him, it was like he wanted me to straight-up change my mind right there in his office, so he went to go get my latest test from Dr. Pogo to _show me_ how much better I am than ‘trivialities of the Arts.’”

“Oh my God,” Ben murmured. “What happened then?”

Vanya smiled. “Well,” she said, “I guess he misjudged me even more than he thinks I’ve misjudged myself. He thought it was a good idea to tell me off, try and tear down all my dreams, and then leave me alone in his office? With absolutely no supervision? For a whole five minutes?”

Ben could feel how far his jaw had fallen, but he couldn’t quite manage to pick it up. “Vanya, what did you do?”

“Oh, nothing he’ll notice,” Vanya shrugged. “Just swiped this from the cabinet behind his desk.”

She stuck a hand into her pocket and pulled out a large brass key. Dangling from the handle, on a little paper tag, was the number 8.


End file.
